For one brief second Kate was glad that the wall was between her and the real live Indians; but the music came near and nearer, and the huge chariot—“such as no kings of the East ever dreamed of riding in,” Frank afterward told her—rolled along, bearing aloft gaily-dressed men and women. Kate could see them, and she saw the heads and backs of the elephants and the camels, and the tops of many cages, and at the very last, a forlorn looking boy’s face—just a glimpse of it, as she gave a jump high up to catch sight of anything more that might be coming. The boy was seated on a pony, but that Kate could not see.
“Are they all gone, Frank?” she called.
“Yes, I see the red of the big elephant’s blanket between the trees, and that’s all.”
“Come then!”
“Just give me my hat—you sit down and wait; I’ll be back in no time at all; I’m going to run across lots, up to the mound, to see it come down on the other side.”
“Frank, please let me see it with you. Help me over the wall. I can run as fast as you can when I once get over.”
“It’ll be gone before I can get there, and you can see it all this afternoon. Toss over my hat.”
It was well shaded where Frank stood, under the cherry trees, but on the other side the sun poured down its heat on poor Kate’s head, as she took off the straw hat and threw it over to Frank.
It was too warm to wait there, and Frank’s cornfield lay between the wall and any place that was shaded. In crossing the lot Kate came upon the small-sized hoe that her brother had thrown down in his flight. She picked it up, and putting the handle into the soft earth, left it standing there, that her brother might easily find his place again. Then she did her very best to twist her apron around her head, and went home. She did not know how long she had been gone. There was Neptune waiting at the carriage gate to carry her to school, and in the doorway stood her mother, saying as the girl drew near,
“Why, Kate, where have you been?—without a hat, too, in this sun.”