The clown, standing by the little bed, looked gravely down upon the child with a regard of infinite kind-heartedness. He shook his head, and looking at the anxious father and the mother in her agony, said smiling, "He is right. This is not Slap-bang." And he left the room.
"I shall not see him; I shall never him again," said the child, softly.
But all at once—half an hour had not elapsed since the clown had disappeared—the door was sharply opened, and behold, in his black spangled tunic, the yellow tuft upon his head, the golden butterfly upon his breast and back, a large smile opening his mouth like a money-box, his face white with flour, Slap-bang, the true Slap-bang, the Slap-bang of the circus, burst into view. And in his little white cot, with the joy of life in his eyes, laughing, crying, happy, saved, the little fellow clapped his feeble hands, and, with the recovered gaiety of seven years old, cried out:
"Bravo! Bravo, Slap-bang! It is he this time! This is Slap-bang! Long live Slap-bang! Bravo!"
CHAPTER IV.
When the doctor called that day, he found, sitting beside the little patient's pillow, a white-faced clown, who kept him in a constant ripple of laughter, and who was observing, as he stirred a lump of sugar at the bottom of a glass of cooling drink:
"You know, Francis, if you do not drink your medicine, you will never see Slap-bang again."
And the child drank up the draught.
"Is it not good?"