So Johnny hurried up, and was so perfectly breathless when he reached home, that he gasped for several minutes before he could begin to shout through the house for his mother.
His very first shout was enough; it was given at the foot of the front stairs, and, as his mother was in the dining-room, it reached her instantly, and without losing anything by the way. She came out at once, and boxed his ears lightly with the feather-duster, saying,—
“Johnny Leslie! This is not a deaf and dumb asylum. Did you imagine, when you came in that it was?”
“I didn’t know you were so near, mammy dear,” panted Johnny, “and I’m in the worst kind—I mean, a dreadful hurry, I don’t see why there couldn’t be a thinkephone, so that we could just think things at each other, it would save so much time. The boys are all waiting for me, and they want me to go to the circus with them this afternoon, because Ned Grafton says the first performance is always the best, before the beasts get the roar out of them, and before the people are tired, so mayn’t I take my own half dollar, and go with them, and then I can go with papa and Tiny to-morrow, too—it isn’t that I don’t want to go with him, but I want to have the best of it!”
“Is any grown person going with the ‘boys’?” asked Mrs. Leslie.
“N-o, mamma,” replied Johnny, hesitatingly, “at least, they didn’t say there was, and I don’t believe there is, but some of the boys are quite old, you know—Charley Graham is ’most fifteen—and there isn’t any danger; all the things are in cages, except the Tattooed Man.”
“I’m ever so sorry, dear,” said his mother, putting her arm around him, “but indeed I don’t feel willing to have you go without some grown person. There will be a very great crowd, and I don’t know all the boys with whom you want to go, and you might be led into all sorts of dangers. And it is all nonsense about the beasts getting the roar out of them by to-morrow; poor things! they’ll keep on roaring as long as they are caged. So you must be patient. I really think you’ll enjoy it more with papa to explain things, and Tiny to help you.”
“But they’re all waiting for me!” said Johnny, choking down a sob, “and something may happen between now and to-morrow—it’s a great while! Oh, please, dear mammy! I’ll be just as careful as if papa were there, and come right straight home when it’s out!”
Johnny’s mother looked nearly as sorry as he did.