"Slap-bang!"
The poor mother looked at her husband with a frightened glance. What was the little fellow saying? Was the terrible delirium coming back again? "Slap-bang!" She knew not what that signified. She was frightened at the strangeness of the words, which now the sick boy, with the perversity of illness—as if, having screwed his courage up to put his dream in words, he was resolved to speak of nothing else—repeated without ceasing:—
"Slap-bang! I want Slap-bang!"
"What does he mean?" she said, distractedly, grasping her husband's hand. "Oh, he is lost!"
But Jacques' rough face wore a smile of wonder and relief, like that of one condemned to death who sees a chance of liberty.
Slap-bang! He remembered well the morning of Whit-Monday, when he had taken Francis to the circus. He could hear still the child's delighted laughter, when the clown—the beautiful clown, all be-starred with golden spangles, and with a huge many-coloured butterfly glittering on the back of his black costume—skipped across the track, tripped up the riding-master by the heels, took a walk upon his hands, or threw up to the gas-light the soft felt caps, which he dexterously caught upon his skull, where, one by one, they formed a pyramid; while at every trick and every jest, his large droll face expanding with a smile, he uttered the same catch-word, sometimes to a roll of music from the band, "Slap-bang!" And every time he uttered it the audience roared and the little fellow shouted with delight.
Slap-bang! It was this Slap-bang, the circus clown, he who kept half the city laughing, whom little Francis wished to see, and whom, alas! he could not see as he lay pale and feeble in his little bed.
That night Jacques brought the child a jointed clown, ablaze with spangles, which he had bought at a high price. Four days' wages would not pay for it; but he would willingly have given the price of a year's labour, could he have brought a smile to the thin lips of the sick boy.
The child looked for a moment at the toy which sparkled on the bed-quilt. Then he said, sadly, "That is not Slap-bang. I want to see Slap-bang!"
If only Jacques could have wrapped him in the bed-clothes, borne him to the circus, shown him the clown dancing under the blazing gas-lights, and said, "Look there!"