“The parson's promise didn't get to him none too quick,” he read. “That seemed to be what he was waitin' for. He give up the night it come, and I got him a little room in a hotel after the show, and let one of the other fellers get the stuff out o' town, so's I could stay with him up to the finish. It come 'round mornin'. There wasn't much to it—he just seemed tired and peaceful like. 'I'm glad he wrote what he did,' he said, meanin' the parson. 'She knows, she allus knows,' he whispered, meanin' you, Poll, and then he was on his way. He'd already give me what was saved up for you, and I'm sendin' it along with this—” A blue money order for two hundred and fifty dollars had fluttered from the envelope when Douglas opened it.
“I got everythin' ready afore I went on the next day, an' I went up and saw the little spot on the hill where they was goin' to stow him. It looked kinder nice and the digger's wife said she'd put some flowers on to it now and then. It was YOU what made me think o' that, Poll, 'cause it seemed to me what you would a' done; you was always so daffy about flowers, you and him.
“I guess this letter's too long for me to be a-sayin' much about the show, but the 'Leap-a-Death' girl got hern last week. She wasn't strong enough for the job, nohow. I done what I could for her outside the show, 'cause I knowed how you was always a-feelin' 'bout her. I guess the 'Leap-a-Death's' husband is goin' to jump his job soon, if he gets enough saved up, 'cause him and Barker can't hit it off no more. We got a good deal o' trouble among the animals, too. None o' the snakes is sheddin' like they ought to, and Jumbo's a-carryin' a sixteen foot bandage around that trunk a' hisn, 'cause he got too fresh with Trixy's grub the other night, and the new giraffe's got the croup in that seven-foot neck o' his'n. I guess you'll think I got the pip for fair this time, so I'll just get onto myself now and cut this short. I'll be writin' you agin when we hit Morgantown.
“Your old Muvver Jim.”
Douglas laid the letter gently on the table, his hand still resting upon it. He looked helplessly at the little, shrunken figure in the opposite chair. Polly had made no sound, but her head had slipped lower and lower and she now sat very quietly with her face in her hands. She had been taught by Toby and Jim never to whimper.
“What a plucky lot they are,” thought Douglas, as he considered these three lonely souls, each accepting whatever fate brought with no rebellion or even surprise. It was a strange world of stoics in which these children of the amusement arena fought and lost. They came and went like phantoms, with as little consciousness of their own best interests as of the great, moving powers of the world about them. They felt no throes of envy, no bitterness. They loved and worked and “went their way.”
For once the pastor was powerless in the presence of grief. Both he and Mandy left the room quietly, feeling that Polly wished to be spared the outburst of tears that a sympathetic word might bring upon her. They allowed her to remain alone for a time, then Mandy entered softly with a tender good night and Douglas followed her cheerily as though nothing at all had happened.
It was many weeks before Polly again became a companion to Douglas and Mandy, but they did not intrude upon her grief. They waited patiently for the time when youth should again assert itself, and bring back their laughing mate to them.