Uncle Ben proceeded to the Big House where the Blue Birds and Bobolinks were awaiting him. As he drew near, Miss Selina remarked:
“He’s smiling as if he had something funny to tell us.”
But he said nothing, and all the coaxing and urging to tell what had occurred at Happy Hills to amuse him availed nothing.
While Uncle Ben was training the Blue Birds and Bobolinks to do their part in the circus all unknown to Miss Martin, the latter was gradually absorbing every inhabitant at Happy Hills camp into her company. Even Dinah and her assistants offered to do their share. That share consisted of baking pyramids of good cookies and ginger-snaps, and preparing lemonade, for a stand just beside the entrance to the arena.
If the day was bright and clear, the circus would take place in the clearing where the firemen exhibited their prowess. If it was rainy, it would have to be curtailed in many acts but could be given in part at the Refectory, called “Hippodrome Hall” for the occasion.
The morning dawned bright and cloudless to the great joy and relief of many worrying circus people. The benches were quickly placed at the upper side of the base-ball diamond, and several large canvases borrowed from a house-painter in the nearest town, were hung up as screens for the side-shows.
The Fire-house was decorated with greens and flags but the apparatus was pulled out and left to dazzle all eyes at one side of the building. The inside was to be used for other purposes.
Uncle Ben had supervised his police and firemen in erecting temporary pens behind the canvas screens, and here his wild beasts were to be exhibited. Adjoining the pens were a number of large piano cases raised upon posts so that they were about eighteen inches from the ground. The front sides of these great boxes were gone but wooden laths made “bars to the cages.” On the top facing each box was painted the name of the wild thing within.
The first case was to hold a fierce Numidian lion, said to be the only one ever caught and tamed at Happy Hills. Next to this was a red wolf—a man-eating wolf at that! Then one was to see the wild man from Borneo with a great ring through his nose that he might be made to obey without danger to his keeper.
Then there was to be an Albino girl, and a few savage Zulus with poisoned arrows to shoot at passers-by. There was a placard over one of the cages saying that the strange animal shown was the only one of its kind ever found, and being a native of the Valley of Delight, it was considered as very valuable.