"Whiteface! Here I am!"
The clown turned to him, made that funny clicking noise in his mouth and bowed.
"Jerry Elbow," said the clown and clapped his hands.
"It's Jerry!" exclaimed Danny's startled voice somewhere among the hundreds of boys and grown-ups back of Jerry. Then Danny added in an awed voice, "The clown spoke to him!"
Jerry suddenly sat down, for all eyes were directed towards him. He didn't look around for Danny and Chris, for he was too confused to face all those pairs of eyes.
Four or five of the other clowns gathered about Whiteface, looked up at Jerry and clapped their hands, too. Jerry shut his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them Whiteface and the other clowns were all doing something there right in front of him.
Whiteface was placing his bulldog down on the ground and Jerry kept fascinated eyes on him. He never could tell afterwards what the other clowns did then except that as they left to go to another part of the circus, one of them, who wore the biggest and longest and flattest shoes Jerry had ever seen, stepped on his own foot and couldn't get off! Another clown had to help him off his own foot!
But everything that Whiteface did Jerry saw and remembered, for he knew that Whiteface was playing just for him alone. The bulldog stood perfectly still until Whiteface held out a stick; then the clown jerked upon the strap which he held in his right hand, one end of which was fastened to the dog's collar, and the dog jumped right over the stick!
Next time Whiteface raised the stick much higher, but when he signaled to the dog by jerking on his collar that it was time for him to jump, the dog jumped over the stick again.
Jerry heard the crowd laughing and applauding. He thought no one could help laughing at the ludicrous expression on the clown's face as he looked up at the spectators every time the dog jumped the stick. Jerry did not awake to the fact that the bulldog was a stuffed toy one, and not a real dog, until the clown took it by the tail and struck another clown on the back with it.