A busy little man was David Lannarck in the week that followed. With a horse to break and a speech to make, the time was fully occupied. The colt was quartered at the Gillis barn. Davy stayed with the colt. Of mornings, Landy assisted with the colt's grooming and education. His white mane and tail were washed and brushed and his red coat fairly shone from the attention given. Landy rasped his feet to evenness and cautioned that he would have to be shod if used on hard-surfaced roads. "Potter can shoe him all right," he explained, "but we'll have to send an order for a set of little shoes to fit."
The morning rides were usually on the rather level roadway that led up to Pinnacle Point, but there were sidetrips down ill-defined paths to the little creeks. Landy sometimes went along to advise as to road gaits. The Gillis dogs were constant companions. In fact, since the night of Davy's arrival they waited around until he made his appearance and followed him constantly. Except for the fact that he was scheduled to make a public appearance at Adot next Saturday night, David Lannarck was now enjoying the rest and joys that he had dreamed of and planned when he was oppressed by the mob.
"I am not writing out a speech," Davy explained to Mrs. Gillis as he bent over the pad of paper, pencil in hand. "I am just jotting down some incidents of circus life that the public might want to know. This girl over at the B-line—My, oh, my, but she's got a compelling line of chatter. If she would do the ballyhoo for a Kid Show, she would pack 'em in to bust down the sidewalls. Now this girl said I was to talk about midgets and circuses. What I know about midgets and circuses would fill two books. My problem is to leave out the commonplace routine and tell 'inside stuff.'"
Mrs. Gillis had cleared a side table where Davy, in his high chair, could jot down the items that he would use in his talk. It was while he was thus engaged of afternoons and evenings that Mrs. Gillis heard the life story of the only midget she had ever known.
"My name wasn't always Lannarck," Davy explained one afternoon when Mrs. Gillis detailed something of her ancestry and early childhood. "My name was O'Rahan, and I was christened Daniel. I am Irish—both sides. My Dad was a young, happy-go-lucky Irish lad, a hard worker, a free liver, and surely improvident. Foot-loose and free he joined a party in the rush to the Klondike. Three years later he came back with enough money to fill a pad saddle. And they took it away from him as fast as he had accumulated it.
"He met my mother, Ellen Monyhan, at a party, and he was as speedy at courting as he was at spending. They were married but a short while when the financial crash came. He was ashamed and humiliated but not beaten. He wanted another try at this fascinating game. He went back to the Klondike—and to his death at sea.
"I was born in a hospital in Springfield. My young, heartbroken mother died there. There were no relatives nearer than cousins. In due time I was committed to an orphanage. I have no memory of either parent and my information concerning them is meager and second hand. Now this orphanage was well conducted, but it wasn't a home; it was an institution. With anywhere from thirty to sixty children to care for, it lacked the personal equation. It was mass production—you did things by rote, en-masse—no individuality. But I have no complaint. As a babe and child I was well-fed and clothed, in a uniform common to all.
"And then I started to school along with all the others. But something was happening to me that did not happen to the others. I quit growing. Mentally I was like the others—kept up with my grades—but I never grew taller than thirty-two inches and never weighed more than thirty-eight pounds. Other children would shoot up like corn stalks, but I stayed right where I had been in the months and years past.
"To me, it was a heart breaking disclosure. I wanted to play ball, to make the team, only to find that as the slow months crept on, I was assigned to the playground of the little kids, babes, toddlers. The balls, bats, mitts, and other playthings were too big for me. But I kept up with my classes in school and maybe the disappointments in sports urged me to win somewhere else. I won the eighth-grade prize in arithmetic and mechanical drawing. And then came high school, and the great disaster, quickly followed by an entrance into an Orphan's Heaven—a home in a private family. In the shifting personnel at the orphanage, there were fewer high-school pupils. We went to a different building over different streets. It was no doubt a singular sight to the residents to see a midget with six-footers, but it was just that way. And it must have been a singular sight to Loron Usark, a big childish lout that lived on Spruce Street. We would pass the end of the alley back of his house and he was out there every day to watch us go by. Now this Loron was too weak, mentally, for school. Ordered around by everybody and pestered and teased by many, the moronic-minded will seek a victim that he can abuse and bend to his own will, and this Loron party was on the lookout. One day he caught me tagging along behind the others. He grabbed me and would have beaten me, but my companions rescued me. After that, I had to be on the lookout. I was marked for slaughter by this fool.
"Mrs. Gillis," Davy changed his tone of voice to a deeper bass, as was his wont when he desired to impress a listener. He shook his pencil at his deeply interested audience of one. "Mrs. Gillis, I've seen a lot of people in my time. Except for old-time circus people and theatrical troopers, I've seen a million more than my share. And you can set this down on your mental calendar as an established truth: whenever you see a Big One taunting a Little One, you can set him down as a big coward. And, whenever you see a Dub kidding a Lout, you can be assured that the dub is trying to lift himself above a similar rating.