Joe’s face must have showed his surprise, for the circus lad noticed it, and with a laugh, said:
“It isn’t an aquarium you’re helping to carry. This just has my clothes and some other things in it—the suit I wear—I’m the ‘human fish,’ you know.”
“You are—a fish?”
“Yes. Turton’s my right name, Benny Turton, but I’m billed as the ‘human fish.’ I do an act in a tank of water—swimming, diving, staying under a long time, picking coins up in my mouth and all that. It isn’t a bad act they tell me.
“Last night I ripped the suit I wear—sort of fish-scale arrangement, you know, and I wanted to get it out of my trunk early, to have it mended. I’m much obliged to you,” he went on, as Joe set his end of the trunk down in the dressing tent, which was now becoming thronged with other performers who were getting ready for the parade.
“Oh, you’re welcome, I’m sure,” Joe answered. “I guess I’ll come and see you perform.”
“I’d be glad to have you. Say, if you’d like to look about a bit now I can fix it up for you.”
“I’d like to see the trapeze fellows at practice.”
“All right. I’ll speak to the ring-master. Oh, I say Jim—Jim Tracy!” called the “human fish” to a big, red-faced and black-mustached man who entered the tent just then.
“Hello, Ben, what is it now?” was the answer.