“Sure!” Billy assented, heartily. “I take it back about old Sir Thomas; I guess they’re equal partners, after all.”
“They’re a regular Damon and Pythias, aren’t they? And we’ll have Flash for the Polar Bear, in the circus, and Tom for the Royal Bengal Tiger, the baby tiger, you know.”
“Yes; and we’ll have to train the dogs,— Whoopee! Only four weeks of school. We’ll have to hurry if we do the circus and “Lady of the Lake” both before vacation.”
“Before vacation? Why, they’ll be just the things to do in vacation.”
“They’ll have to be done before vacation or not at all,” he answered, so seriously that May Nell wondered a little; wondered still more as the moments passed and the dark room grew very quiet. She did not know what purpose was growing in Billy’s mind, a purpose that largely concerned herself.
CHAPTER XI
GOOD-NIGHT IN THE FO’CASTLE
THE silence was broken a little later by merry voices on the stairway. For several nights the girls had been gathering in May Nell’s room. Billy knew “things were doing” there by the sounds; the tap, tap of the tack hammer, added to much chatter and rustling. Now May Nell caught him by the hand and pulled him across the hall. A strange pungent fragrance like burning spice, yet not familiar, met them at the door. And inside, the dark hangings full of lurking shadows gave the room a foreign air.
The Queen of Sheba in gypsy dress, and her harum-scarum train buzzing with gossip and exclamation, flocked in. Bess looked magnificent in a mass of draperies that included every Oriental thing to be found in several families.