“Yes, I don’t see anything of those bad boys,” answered Blackie and then she quickly ran off the circus grounds, after one look back at the crowds of people, the gay, fluttering flags, and the men selling pink lemonade, peanuts and toy balloons.
“Another adventure!” exclaimed Blackie, as she went to a little brook in a field to get a drink. “Whoever would think that I should run into a circus,” thought Blackie, as she washed her face with her paws. “I don’t believe even Speckle, as many times as he has run away, ever met Dido, the dancing bear, or Tum Tum, the jolly elephant.
“I wonder who that dog Don can be that Dido spoke of? I wonder if he would be kind to me if he met me? I could tell him I knew Dido and Tum Tum, and that might make a difference. Of course I don’t know the bear and elephant very well,” thought Blackie. “But I had no time to stay to get better acquainted. A circus must be a queer place.”
Blackie did not quite know what to do next. She looked over the fields, and, far away, she could see the white circus tent. Then she looked down in the water and she could see herself, as in a looking-glass.
“My! How rough my fur is!” said Blackie. “I’m all ruffled up, and I’m beginning to get thin, I do believe! That comes of not having enough to eat. I’m half starved. I think I’ll go back home. I have had enough of running away.
“It’s all very well to talk about having adventures, and getting yourself in a book, and all that. But Muffins was right. It is nicer to stay home. I don’t wonder Speckle would not run away with me, nor Muffins either.
“Yes, that’s what I’ll do,” went on Blackie, as she took another look at herself in the water looking-glass. “I’ll go back home. There’s no use trying to find Mrs. Thompson, though she was very good and kind to me. I can’t tell which is her house. I’ll go back to the city, to Arthur and Mabel. They must be as lonesome for me as I am for them.”
The two children were. They had looked all over for Blackie, and even put an advertisement in the newspapers, asking any one who saw their pet to bring her back.
But Blackie was far away, for Mrs. Thompson had taken her on a long railroad journey.