"Don't know I care?" says he. "But ain't I showed 'em—ten thousand dollars' worth?"
"Oh," I says, "that way! Yes, they know that way. In dollars they know; but they don't know in feelings. It's them," I says, "that counts." I set down by him, right on a pile of my new sewing. "Look here," I says, "Nick Nordman, if that's the way you feel about coming back and about the village, let's you and me fix up some way to make folks know you feel that way."
His face lit up. "How?" says he, doubting.
I thought a minute. I don't know why it was, but all at once there flashed into my head the way he had been with the boys, and the way the boys had been to him; that was what he was wanting, and that was what had been lacking, and that was what he didn't know how to make come. And he was lonesome for it.
"It ought to be," says I, feeling my way in my own head, "some way that'll make folks—Oh, Nick," I says, jumping up, "I know the very thing!"
Pitcairn's Circus that wintered not twenty miles from us, and that had got so big and successful that it hadn't been to Friendship Village before in twenty years! And this year, when they'd wanted to come, the council had put the license so high that they refused it. And yet, one morning, we woke up to find the town plastered up and down with the big flaming bill posters of Pitcairn's Circus itself. The town had all it could do to believe in its own good luck. But there was no room to doubt. There they were:
BALLET OF TWELVE HUNDRED
Tremendous Pageant and Spectacle Of
Esther, the Beautiful Queen
magnificent costumes, regal women,
gorgeous jewels, diverting dancers,
solos and ensembles
A HUNDRED TRAINED RIDERS,
A HUNDRED ACROBATS, A HUNDRED
ANIMALS FROM THE HEART OF THE
WILD HILLS