The next day they completed the setting up of the camp. Ethel christened it “Camp Rosemont,” looked over it with the eye of the master, and arranged everything for the meals. She had a flag-pole planted for the Stars and Stripes. The rumor ran through the country that circus people had come and were camping under a tent in the open. Curious villagers came and looked on from a distance, stretching out their necks.
“Let the children come!” Ethel said. She stuffed them with sweetmeats, spreading bread and butter with jelly for them with her own hands. The little girls amused her most, with their braided hair and simple gowns and little wooden shoes. She met an inborn politeness in them—the refinement of ancient days; they curtsied to her.
“You’d say they were fresh from the company of princesses,” was Ethel’s appreciation. True enough, their games, the volant, the grâces, the dancing in a round, and the songs, in which they spoke of ladies and princes and knights, all told of the olden time of joust and tournament.
“How nice you all are,” Ethel said to them. “Will you come often? You are not afraid of me?”
“Oh, no, mademoiselle!”
“Bring your little playmates. I shall always have cakes for you.”
“Oh, no, mademoiselle!”
“What! You do not wish to eat my cakes?”
“Oh, not every day! Our parents would scold us! But you can tell us nice stories, and then you might give us tickets for the circus. You must look pretty when you go riding horseback.”
“So you think I’m a circus-rider?”