The circus they had that morning was ten times as nice as the one they had had before.
"Oh, what fun it would be," said Barty, "if we had a little clown." He wasn't hinting in the least, he only said it because it just came into his head, and he had no sooner said it than the Good Wolf walked forward.
"Now I should like to know," he said, "why I never thought
once of that. It was perfectly ridiculous of me."
He gave his pink ear a flip and out flew a tiny clown in baggy white trousers with his hands stuck in the pockets, and a frill round his neck and a red and white painted face. And he turned sixteen somersaults one after the other and bounced onto his feet and stuck out his tongue, and said in a cracked little shrill voice just like a big clown: "Here we are again, sir. How are you to-morrow?"
And this was such a tremendous joke that it was not only Barty who laughed till he rolled over, but every single little animal
