“Anyway, it all added to the fun,” said Diggeldy Dan. “In fact, Zebra reminded me of a donkey I once rode in a small one-ring circus of the long, long ago.”
“Oh, then you were not always with the very biggest kind?” questioned Puma.
“By no means,” answered Dan, “and, indeed, might never have been had I not met Gray Ears, the Elephant.”
“A story, a story!” cried Leopard. “Tell us the story!”
“To-morrow I will,” agreed Diggeldy Dan, “for the Petal Watch warns me there is no time to-day. Come, now, Zebra, hurry away with the plume and costume and put them where they belong, while Monkey and I close each door and corral.
“At twilight to-morrow,” the clown called again, as Zebra returned and his chain was hooked fast; “then I’ll tell you the tale of a midsummer’s day, away back in the dim, distant past.”
CHAPTER XII
IN WHICH DAN ANSWERS THE BECKONING TREES
Not in all Spangleland, nor, for that matter, anywhere else, is there to be found quite such a twilight as that which is spun in the great tent that belongs to the “monkeys, and lions, and tigers and things.”
As you must often have noted, there is among the breezes, a certain one that is extremely partial to animals. It is never happier than when ruffling the forelock of some big dapple-gray; teasing the tail of proud chanticleer; or cradling a gull in its wide-spreading arms. Indeed, it is the very “vagrant breeze” of which, doubtless, you have heard many times. But, wherever its fancy may carry it throughout the hours of the day, it always reaches Spangleland just before the sun dips from view. There it seeks out a hiding place on the edge of the town, to watch and to wait. And, at the first sign of eventide, this knowing breeze slips along near the ground, wriggles under the wall, and so comes inside the menagerie tent.
Once within, it frolics this way and that, but so very slyly that even the keenest-eared of the animals can no more detect it than one might hear a butterfly sing. Yet it is here, there, and everywhere, rubbing its nose against the blue of the poles and its back and its sides against the cages of red. In doing this it takes just a bit of the color of both and so clothes itself in a soft, purple coat. Then, when it departs, it leaves the filmy garment behind, and that, you see, is the twilight.