“Do you mean the time you did the trick of climbing the pole here in the barn, and it toppled over with you and the elephant had to hold it up?” asked Beckie. “Was that fun?”
“I was too scared to think it was funny, but it might have been jolly for the others,” laughed Neddie.
Then the two little bear children, who had run away from their home in the cave-house on the side of the hill, walked around the circus barn. They listened to the lions having their roaring lessons, in which the seals, who juggled rubber balls on the ends of their noses, also joined. Then Neddie and Beckie looked at the tall giraffes take a lesson in picking oranges off the top rafters of the barn, and at the hippopotamus, who had to have his sore throat looked at by Dr. Possum, who always attended the sick circus animals.
“My! You have a very sore throat,” said Dr. Possum to the hippopotamus when he had looked at it. The hippo opened his mouth so wide that Dr. Possum could get right inside, which he did, sitting on the hippo’s tongue in order to see better. “Yes, a very sore throat,” went on Dr. Possum. “You must gargle it.”
So he gave the hippo some medicine, and the hippo gargled his throat and really he made such a funny noise, like thunder, doing it that Beckie and Neddie had to laugh. And that made the hippo sneeze so that he could not gargle.
“When are we going out traveling around again?” asked Neddie of the Professor and George. “Are we always going to stay here with the circus animals?”
“No, indeed,” answered the Professor as he blew a nice tune on his brass horn. “But it is getting too cold for traveling now, and sleeping out in the woods. Besides, all the children are saving up their pennies for Christmas, and they will not drop any in my cap when I go around after George has done his tricks.
“So I think we will stay with the kind circus man and his pets for some time—at least until it gets warmer. Meanwhile, Neddie, I want to show you a new trick that you can do with George. I’ll have you ride on his shoulders, carrying a broom, and I think that will make the people laugh, and when people laugh they give you more pennies than otherwise.”
“Oh, goodie! I’m going to learn another trick!” cried Neddie in delight. Then the Professor took the little bear boy off to one side of the barn, near the place where the elephants slept in the hay, and, with the big, kind, tame bear, George, they practiced the new trick, the Professor blowing a tooting-toot-toot-tune on his brass horn every once in a while.
This left Beckie to play by herself, but she was not lonesome, for she had her rubber doll to take care of, and she could watch the hippo gargle his big red flannel throat, and she looked at the monkeys doing tricks in their cages.