“Oh, if you have!” sighed Janet.
“Don’t tease them, Richard,” urged Mrs. Martin. “Of course you are going to see the circus,” she said. “Daddy is only fooling.”
“The nellifunt—he eats peanuts!” observed Trouble.
“Yes, and he nearly ate you!” cried Janet, giving her little brother a loving hug.
“I never was so frightened in all my life!” murmured Mrs. Martin. “Oh, I thought you would never get down there to him, Dick,” and she looked at her husband.
“I never would have gotten there in time to take him away from the elephant,” said Mr. Martin. “If it hadn’t been for that old gentleman——”
“We simply must find him and thank him!” interrupted Mrs. Martin. “Look and see if you can locate him, Dick,” she urged her husband.
Mr. Martin tried, but it would have been hard to locate even a friend in that moving crowd, to say nothing of trying to pick out a stranger seen only once. The white-haired man and his gentle wife seemed to have disappeared.
“It’s too bad you didn’t tell him your name, so he could find us,” said Mrs. Martin.
“I never thought of that,” her husband answered. “But maybe I’ll see him again, though he looked like a stranger in town.” Mr. Martin knew a great many persons in Cresco because so many of them traded at his store. He was certain he had never before seen this old man.