"Oh, no, I wouldn't want that," Joe declared. As it was, there was plenty of professional jealousy directed toward him, and he did not want to arouse more by encroaching on the time of some other performer.
"I could cut out all of your trapeze work," went on the ring-master, "but I don't want to do that. We haven't any too many good trapezists."
"Thanks," said Joe. "I wouldn't want to give up the bar and rope work, either. I guess I'll wait until next season to give Lizzie a larger part in the act."
Joe did not want to give up his trapeze work for several reasons, one being that it kept him in trim for a certain hazy plan he had in mind. Joe was a youth on whom great heights made no impression. He felt fully as safe on the dizzy height of some church steeple as he did on the ground.
There are some persons who have a morbid fear of looking down from any great height, and who always refuse to ascend a high place or to look down from the top of a tall building.
There is another class of people who are really made temporarily insane when looking from a great height and have an almost irresistible inclination to throw themselves down. There is a complicated medical term which is applied to this disease, for a disease it is. Such persons should never look down from great heights.
But, fortunately, Joe was not in this class. He did not in the least mind climbing high up into the air, with even a frail support. And it was his trapeze work that kept him in good trim for this sort of daring, so Joe did not want to give it up.
The tank act, with Lizzie, the seal, in it, was made one of the big features of the circus. Jim Tracy had new bills printed showing Joe and Lizzie apparently having a fine time under water. The posters were large and in gay colors, and Joe's name was featured, to the envy of many others in the circus.
Not a few were the sneers cast at Joe on more than one occasion, when he declined to take part in some jollification, and remarks were made about his being a miser and a "tight-wad."
But Joe did not seem to care. He drew his salary regularly, and as he was not known to gamble or to have other noticeably bad habits, there was considerable speculation as to what he did with his money.