“The parsonage is the nearest house,” said the doctor. “I am sure the pastor will be glad to have her there until we can find out how badly she is hurt.”
In an instant Barker was back in the centre of the ring. He announced that Polly's injuries were slight, called the attention of the audience to the wonderful concert to take place, and bade them make ready for the thrilling chariot race which would end the show.
Jim, blind with despair, lifted the light burden and staggered out of the tent, while the band played furiously and the people fell back into their seats. The Roman chariots thundered and clattered around the outside of the ring, the audience cheered the winner of the race, and for the moment Polly was forgotten.
Chapter IV
THE blare of the circus band had been a sore temptation to Mandy Jones all afternoon and evening. Again and again it had dragged her from her work to the study window, from which she could see the wonders so tantalisingly near. Mandy was housekeeper for the Rev. John Douglas, but the unwashed supper dishes did not trouble her, as she watched the lumbering elephants, the restless lions, the long-necked giraffes and the striped zebras, that came and went in the nearby circus lot. And yet, in spite of her own curiosity, she could not forgive her vagrant “worse half,” Hasty, who had been lured from duty early in the day. She had once dubbed him Hasty, in a spirit of derision, and the name had clung to him. The sarcasm seemed doubly appropriate to-night, for he had been away since ten that morning, and it was now past nine.
The young pastor for a time had enjoyed Mandy's tirades against her husband, but when she began calling shrilly out of the window to chance acquaintances for news of him, he slipped quietly into the next room to finish to-morrow's sermon. Mandy renewed her operations at the window with increased vigour when the pastor had gone. She was barely saved from pitching head foremost into the lot, by the timely arrival of Deacon Strong's daughter, who managed, with difficulty, to connect the excited woman's feet with the floor.
“Foh de Lor' sake!” Mandy gasped, as she stood panting for breath and blinking at the pretty, young, apple-faced Julia; “I was suah most gone dat time.” Then followed another outburst against the delinquent Hasty.
But the deacon's daughter did not hear; her eyes were already wandering anxiously to the lights and the tinsel of the little world beyond the window.
This was not the first time to-day that Mandy had found herself talking to space. There had been a steady stream of callers at the parsonage since eleven that morning, but she had long ago confided to the pastor that she suspected their reasons.