“Then we must call around and see you, and have you visit us, even if you are here for but a few days,” said Mr. Martin, and then, for a time, social talk was hard to carry on, for Janet pulled her father at one side, to tell him to look at some of the circus tricks, and Ted was pulling his mother on the other side for the same purpose. Trouble, in a whirlwind of joy, was munching peanuts and trying to look two ways at the same time.
It was a wonderful circus. Never were there such exciting animal tricks! Never such skillful trapeze performers, never such funny clowns! How the children laughed when one clown, dressed like a policeman, started to arrest another clown dressed as a farmer. The farmer clown pushed the policeman clown down and then jumped on him.
But under his coat the policeman clown wore a rubber bag, blown up with air. And when the farmer clown jumped on it—up he bounced like a ball.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” screamed Trouble, in wild delight.
“And look at that man! He’s going to do a high dive from the top of the tent!” cried Ted, pointing to a performer in red tights standing on a little platform at the top of the center pole.
“Oh, I can’t bear to look at him!” murmured Mrs. Martin, covering her eyes with her hands.
However, the man jumped safely amid great applause, and then followed other tricks and animal acts. During a pause in the performance Mrs. Keller leaned back and said to Mrs. Martin:
“My husband and I are on our vacation; or rather, it is his vacation and I am spending it with him.”
“That’s nice,” murmured the mother of the Curlytops. “Are you going to spend all your vacation in Cresco?”
“Indeed, no,” answered Mrs. Keller, while her husband and Mr. Martin were talking together. “We are going to the seashore in a few days—to Sunset Beach.”