A little later a string of 'sandwich-men' might have been seen walking in step slowly and solemnly across the desert, each bearing before him a beautiful poster (drawn by himself, with a bit of burnt wood on white stuff stretched across four sticks).
'Don't let us tell any one we are sandwich-men,' whispered Mary Carmichael nervously; 'they might think we meant it and take a plateful of us!'
At the end of the procession came Edouardo and the barrow as a caravan.
'It's a pity,' thought Baby Jane with a sigh, 'the barrow has no looking-glasses and gold things and a Britannia on the top and a band inside; but they won't know what a real circus is like, so perhaps we can amuse them.'
It is little wonder that a procession, so rarely seen in those parts, should attract the creatures who saw it from afar, and, as each one ran round the corner and beckoned and shouted to his friends to come along quick, the solemn line of sandwich-men was soon escorted by an expectant rabble. They all seemed of the right sort—beasts really bad at heart despised harmless fun like this.
Greater still was the curiosity aroused when Baby Jane and her troupe came to a stop in a shallow round hollow with sloping banks like the rising tiers of seats in a real circus. Round the bottom of this hollow Sammy drew a line in the sand, and the following crowd were marshalled into their seats outside it.
Then the circus began. The Bear had just the proper fat figure and gruff voice for a ring-master, and he cracked the whip (ordinarily used to encourage Edouardo) in the most correct way. The Rabbit made an excellently idiotic clown.
The first item was a tight-rope dance by Mary Carmichael. She would do it in spite of every one's advice that she was being too ambitious. Dressed in a silly little muslin skirt and carrying the umbrella coquettishly over her shoulder, she skipped up to the rope that had been stretched between two posts, and, with the help of the Bear, clambered on to it. For a moment all went well. With a simpering smile she went trip-tripping along the rope; but then she gave a frightful stagger, swung out her legs in all directions, twisted her back cruelly in a wild effort to recover herself, and fell with a clatter to the ground, smashing the umbrella beneath her.
The whole audience roared with delight, thinking it part of the fun, but there were tears in Mary's eyes as she limped out of the ring.
'I am afraid I have spoiled the whole show with my silliness,' she said in a choking voice. 'I had better be a common spotted horse now.'