"And Romeo Augustus with me?" questioned Philemon, eagerly.
Tadgers shook his head.
"Come by yourself, or not at all," said he, firmly. "What's more, you must be on hand by four o'clock to-morrow morning."
How could Philemon wake at that early hour? It was his wont not only to "sleep like a top all night," but also to "sleep at morn."
Tom, however, agreed to manage that. So when Philemon went to bed at night, it was with one end of a piece of stout twine tied to his ankle, while the other end hung out at the open window.
Neither Elias, John, nor Romeo Augustus, who shared his chamber, spied the cord. Philemon waited till they were sound asleep before he arranged it.
The sun had not begun to show his face above the horizon when there came a brisk twitch on the twine. Philemon was broad awake in a twinkling, and rolled out of bed to dance a one-footed ballet, by reason of a series of jerks given to the cord by the sprightly Thomas below. It was only after Philemon had knocked over two chairs and a cricket that he managed to hop wildly to the window, and to call out in a hoarse whisper, "You'll wake the whole house if you don't quit," that Tom condescended to desist; and a few minutes later the two comrades were climbing into the back of Silas Elder's cart, all ready to start for "The Great Moral Show."
The cart was not spacious, and its springs were few and far between, as Philemon's bones bore witness. He began, all at once, to wonder if it might not have been polite to have mentioned to his parents that he intended to be absent the greater part of the day.
He recollected, with a pang, that it was his mother's custom to be anxious when one of her six precious boys was long out of her sight.
Suddenly, "Look there! there! there!" shouted Tom Tadgers.