AND
MONSIEUR AJAX.
"Look there!" said Toby to Ben, as he pointed out the poster, which was printed in very large letters with gorgeous coloring, and surmounted by a picture of two very small people performing all kinds of impossible feats on horseback. "They've got some one else to ride with Ella to-day. I wonder who it can be?"
Ben looked at Toby for a moment, as if to assure himself that the boy was in earnest in asking the question, and then he relapsed into the worst fit of silent laughing that Toby had ever seen. After he had quite recovered, he asked: "Don't you know who Monsieur Ajax is? Hain't you never seen him?"
"No," replied Toby, at a loss to understand what there was so very funny in his very natural question. "I thought that I was goin' to ride with Ella."
"Why, that's you," almost screamed Ben, in delight. "Monsieur Ajax means you, didn't you know it? You don't suppose they would go to put 'Toby Tyler' on the bills, do you? How it would look!—'Mademoiselle Jeannette an' Monsieur Toby Tyler.'"
Ben was off in one of his laughing spells again, and Toby sat there, stiff and straight, hardly knowing whether to join in the mirth or to get angry at the sport which had been made of his name.
"I don't care," he said at length. "I'm sure I think Toby Tyler sounds just as well as Monsieur Ajax, an' I'm sure it fits me a good deal better."
"That may be," said Ben, soothingly; "but you see it wouldn't go down so well with the public. They want furrin riders, an' they must have 'em, even if it does spoil your name."
Despite the fact that he did not like the new name that had been given him, Toby could not but feel pleased at the glowing terms in which his performance was set off; but he did not at all relish the lie that was told about his having been with Ella in Europe, and he would have been very much better pleased if that portion of it had been left off.