JIMMY RUNS AWAY AGAIN
Now, Jimmy thought that he also would like to be in the procession. He would have liked to dress up as Nan had done, although perhaps he would not have cared to sit quite so close to the lion. They seemed to have forgotten all about him, and he was left to do just as he liked. So what he did was to walk beside the procession into the town, and then to run on ahead to find a good place to see it pass.
He got back to the van long before Nan and her father, and being quite alone, he began to look about him. Hanging on a peg, he saw a lot of old clothes, which seemed rather interesting, especially one suit that must have belonged to the little clown.
Jimmy looked at the dress again and again. There were long things like socks, of a dirty white colour, with a kind of flowery pattern in red along the sides. Then he saw what looked like a very short and baggy pair of light red and blue knickerbockers, and also the jacket of light red and blue too, with curious loose sleeves.
He would very much have liked to put them all on just to see how he looked in them, only that he felt afraid that Nan or her father might return before he had time to take them off again.
No sooner did they come back than they began to prepare for the evening performance, and still everybody seemed too busy to give many thoughts to Jimmy.
'Whose is that little clown's suit?' he asked, while Nan was busy about the van.
'Ah,' she answered, 'that was my little brother's,' and she spoke so unhappily that he did not like to say any more about it.
But Jimmy wanted more and more to try the suit on himself only just for a few moments, and he thought it could not possibly do any harm. Presently Nan, who had taken off Britannia's dress, put on her green velvet riding-habit, and Jimmy could hear the band playing close by, and he guessed that the performance was soon going to begin.
'You can go to bed whenever you like,' said Nan, before she left the van.