“Go? Of course I go every chance I get—to a real country circus—which isn’t often. There’s nothing so convinces me that I am still a little boy as the smell of tanbark and sawdust, and the sound of the clown’s squeaking voice!”
They laughed. It was so easy and so natural to laugh that morning. Even Helena, who had enjoyed many superior entertainments, felt her pulses thrill in anticipation of that day’s amusement; and she meant to let herself “go” for all the fun there might be, with as full—if not as noisy an abandon—as any “mountain girl” among them.
Continued Mr. Seth, closely observing Dorothy who, alone of all the company, was not smiling: “Now, for the morning. I suggest that you pass it quietly at home; tennis, reading, lounging in hammocks—any way to leave yourselves free from fatigue for the afternoon. Dinah says ‘Y’arly dinnah’; because all the ‘help’ want to go to the circus and I want to have them. So we must get the dishes washed betimes, for the ‘Greatest Show On Earth’ opens its afternoon performance at two o’clock sharp precisely to the minute! and I, for one, cannot, positively cannot, miss the Grand Entrance! Umm. I see them now, in fancy’s eye, the cream colored horses, the glittering spangles, the acrobats in tights, the monkeys, the—the——”
“Oh! Don’t say any more, dear Master, or I shall have to ride over with Jim this morning and see the street parade!” cried Molly Breckenridge clasping her plump hands in absurd entreaty, while every lad present looked enviously upon the thus honored James.
“I could buy circus tickets if I put my whole mind to it. How about you, Littlejohn Smith?” observed Monty.
“Give me the cash and let me try!”
Danny said nothing but his eyes were wistfully fixed upon vacancy, while Frazer Moore sadly stated:
“All I ever did see about a circus—so far—was the parade. I run away to that—once.”
“And got a lickin’ for it afterwards, I remember,” commented Mike Martin.