"Oh, my granny!" gasped the youngster, his eyes fairly bulging, "you don't mean that's the pony I thought was like a Teddy bear?"
"That's the one the girls are going to have for their very own. Uncle Rufus has been building a stall in the far shed for it—next to Billy Bumps," Neale assured him.
"And it is chocolate and cream and pink!" exclaimed Sammy. He turned suddenly to Agnes. "Oh, I say, Aggie!" he shouted. "You did know all about what a calico pony was like, didn't you?"
Agnes herself was delighted with the pretty creature. Of course, he was awfully round and fat; but he appeared so funny and cute when he looked out at the audience from under his braided bang, that Scalawag quite endeared himself to all their hearts.
He was something of a clown in the troupe of ponies. He always started last when an order was given and when he had anything to do by himself he appeared "to really hate" to do it. Mr. Sorber seemed to get very angry, and he lashed at the pony quite furiously and shouted at him, so that the little girls squealed.
But the whiplash only wound about Scalawag's neck and did not hurt him, while he put his head around and looked at the ringmaster when he shouted, as though to ask Uncle Bill Sorber: "What's your hurry?"
"He's almost the oldest live thing in the show," chuckled Neale to Luke. "I can remember him when I was a little fellow and was first taken into the ring as the 'Infantile Wonder of the Ages'. I rode Scalawag. He was so fat then that I couldn't have rolled off his back very easily.
"Nothing older with the show, I guess, except Monolith, the moth-eaten old elephant, and the big tortoise in the sideshow. They say the elephant's over a hundred, and some think the tortoise is two hundred years old. So they go Scalawag a little better in age."
At the end of the pony act Mr. Sorber made Scalawag do something that thrilled Dot so that she whispered to Agnes she thought she "should faint!" The ringmaster led the old pony right over in front of the private box, and while all the people looked on, he presented Scalawag to Dot and her absent sister, whom Mr. Sorber spoke of as "T'ressa."
"Ladies and gentlemen, and all friends," began the ringmaster. "Twomley and Sorber's Herculean Circus and Menagerie never does things by halves. Even when we find ourselves obliged to get rid of one of our faithful pufformers we make provision for that pufformer's happy old age.