"Tom," he cried, with longing, "are you going to see the wax figures?"
"Of course I'm going," he replied, carelessly. "We're all going."
"When, Tom?" asked David, with breathless interest.
"Whenever we want to, of course," replied Tom. "I'm not going just once; I'm going as often as I like."
"Why don't you go now, Tom? It's so hot—they might melt."
This startling view of the case was not without its effect on Tom, although a suggestion from such a source was not to be respected. He merely threw his eyes up towards the heavens and said, sturdily: "You ninny! they'll not melt. Don't you see it's going to rain and turn cooler?"
"I'll bet you I'd not wait for it to turn cooler. I'll bet you I'd be in there before you could say Jack Roberson, if I had a quarter," said David, with resolution.
V.
All that long afternoon he hung in feverish excitement around the door of the museum. There was scarce a travelling show in Kentucky in those days. It was not strange if to this idler of the streets, in whom imagination was all-powerful, and in whose heart quivered ungovernable yearnings for the heroic, the poetic, and the beautiful, this day of the first exhibition of wax figures was the most memorable of his life.
It was so easy for everybody to go in who wished; so impossible for him. Groups of gay ladies slipped their silver half-dollars through the variegated meshes of their silken purses. The men came in jolly twos and threes, and would sometimes draw out great rolls of bills. Now a kind-faced farmer passed in, dropping into the hands of the door-keeper a half-dollar for himself, and three quarters for three sleek negroes that followed at his heels; and now a manufacturer with a couple of apprentices—lads of David's age and friends of his. Poor little fellow! at many a shop of the town he had begged to be taken as an apprentice himself, but no one would have him because he was lame.