“No use trying to compete with a circus,” observed the professor, as he heard the news at the small hotel where they put up. “We’ll just wait over a couple of days, Joe, and perhaps we can think up some new tricks in the meanwhile. A rest will do us no harm. I’ll just cancel to-day’s engagement here, and put the show on two nights later. By that time we can get a crowd.”
“Then you haven’t anything for me to do?”
“No, Joe.”
“I guess, then, I’ll go out and see them get ready for the circus. I may take in the show, too.”
“Please yourself, Joe,” said the professor, as his young helper went out. “I didn’t think he could resist the attraction of the sawdust rings of a circus,” he murmured to himself with a smile.
CHAPTER XX
SOME TRAPEZE TRICKS
Joe did not have to ask his way to the circus grounds. He had only to follow the crowd, mostly made up of small boys, though with a goodly sprinkling of young men, all of whom were stringing their way out to the big, vacant lots where the tents were being put up, and where the big cages, wagons, horses, and animals were getting ready for the parade that was to follow.
“They’ll likely have the horse and animal tents up by this time,” mused Joe, “but I can see ’em fixing the main top.”
The largest tent, or the one where the performance is given, is called in circus language the “main top.”
Joe knew something of circuses from having read of them and having seen one or two, but also he remembered a very little, and seemed, too, to have inherited a certain knowledge.