“Well, I’ll see,” began their mother slowly. “I don’t know—”
“Oh, I guess you’d better let them go,” spoke up Grandpa Croaker in his deepest, rumbling voice. “I—I think I can spare the time to look after them. I don’t really want to go, you know, as I was going to play a game of checkers with Uncle Wiggily Longears, but I guess I can take the boys to the circus. Ahem!”
“Oh, goody!” cried Bawly, jumping up and down.
“Where are you going?” asked their papa, just then coming in from the wallpaper factory.
“To the circus,” said Bawly. “Grandpa Croaker will take us.”
“Ha! Hum!” exclaimed Papa No-Tail. “I am very busy, but I guess I can spare the time to take you. We won’t bother Grandpa.”
“Oh, it’s no bother—none at all, I assure you,” quickly spoke the grandpa frog, in a thundering, rumbling voice. “We can both take them.”
“Well, I never heard of such a thing!” exclaimed Mamma No-Tail. “Any one would think you two old men frogs wanted to go as much as the boys do. But I guess it will be all right.”
So Bully and Bawly and their papa and their grandpa went to the circus next day. And what do you think? Just as they were buying their tickets if they didn’t meet Uncle Wiggily Longears! And he had Sammie and Susie, the rabbits, with him, and there was Aunt Lettie, the old lady goat, with the three Wibblewobble children, and many other little friends of Bully and Bawly.
Well, that was a fine circus! There were lots of tents with flags on, and outside were men selling pink lemonade and peanuts for the elephant, and toy balloons, only those weren’t for the elephant, you know, and there were men shouting, and lots of excitement, and there was a side show, with pictures outside the tent of a man swallowing swords by the dozen, and also knives and forks, and another picture of a lady wrapping a fat snake around her neck, because she was cold, I guess, and then you could hear the lions roaring and the elephants trumpeting, and the band was playing, and the peanut wagons were whistling like teakettles, and—and—Oh! why, if I write any more about that circus I’ll want to take my typewriter, and put it away in a dark closet, and go to the show myself!