“I HAIN’T never ben to a circus,” said the little old woman, after the splendor of the grand procession had swept around the ring, and she caught her breath.
“We have never been to one,” said Mrs. Pepper, looking down the length of her row of absorbed faces.
“Is that so? Why, I thought ev’rybody had had a chance at one, ’xcept me— An’ I says, ‘Now, next time it comes to Cherryville, I’ll go.’ I’d ben a-savin’ up for it, for circuses don’t wait for folks to turn back an’ grow young. Look at them ponies—did you ever see sech mites!”
She leaned forward, her withered face suddenly looking as if she had indeed “turned back to grow young.”
“You’re pokin’ me in the back somethin’ dreadful,” said a woman in front, with an indignant face over her shoulder. The head was surmounted with a hat topped off with a big pink bow wound around a higher bunch of yellow roses.
“I s’pose so,” said the little old woman, “but I have to poke, to get the best of that contraption on your head—I’ve got to see; that’s what I come for.”
The woman with the hat flounced back and threw her head up higher yet.
“I guess I’ll have to stand up,” said the little old woman, tired of twisting first one side and then the other.
Mrs. Pepper, her mind down the line where Phronsie in absorbed delight over the ponies, was sitting between Polly and David, had no eyes for her neighbor’s distress. Now she laid her hand on the rusty black shawl. “I’m so much taller,” she said, and before anybody quite knew it, the little old woman was in the seat next to Joel, and Mother Pepper’s black eyes were gazing over the “contraption” of a hat.
And, then, after the ponies, came the elephants—the big one and the little one. Phronsie shivered when the old one marched ponderously into the ring, and threw herself over into Polly’s lap.