“I wish we had a monkey,” said Meg, who did her best to keep a menagerie.
“What’s that man doing?” demanded Twaddles, pulling at Bobby’s sleeve and pointing to a trapeze performer.
“He does things like that,” answered Bobby. “You didn’t go to the circus when it was here 112 two years ago, did you, Twaddles? You and Dot were too little. But I guess maybe you can go this time.”
The four little Blossoms talked of nothing but the circus after this, and Norah said she knew that Meg dreamed of lions and tigers every night. All but one of the Blossoms were going, the children with Father Blossom in the afternoon, and Norah with Sam at night. Mother Blossom had planned to spend the night with a friend in the city, and as she didn’t care much about circuses anyway, she thought she wouldn’t postpone her trip.
“What about school?” asked Father Blossom, coming home one evening to find Twaddles wrapped up in the fur rug and playing he was a polar bear, while Meg and Bobby, each under a chair, growled like panthers, and Dot swung from the curtain pole pretending that she was a trapeze performer. “What do you do about getting excused, Bobby? Really, Dot, you’ll have that curtain pole down in a minute.”
Flushed and smiling, Dot dropped to the floor, and Twaddles came out of his rug. 113
“School lets us out at eleven o’clock, so we can see the parade,” announced Bobby. “Then there isn’t any more after that. Some of the school committee said it was nonsense to close the school for a circus, but Mr. Carter said he wasn’t going to give us a chance to play hooky. Everybody’s going, Daddy.”
“Dot and Twaddles want to meet the children up town to see the parade. So you think that is safe, Ralph?” asked Mother Blossom, coming into the room to tell them that supper was ready. “There will be such a crowd.”
“They mustn’t go alone,” said Father Blossom quickly. “Let Sam take them. They can all sit in Steve Broadwell’s window. He asked me to-day if they didn’t want to come. And as soon as the parade is over, come home to lunch. I’ll meet you here and we’ll get an early start.”
The Wednesday morning, circus day, came at last. Very little work was done in school, and the teachers were as glad as the boys and girls when the dismissal bell rang, for trying to keep the minds of restless little mortals on geography and arithmetic when they are thinking only of 114 monkeys and bears and lions is not an easy task.