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The hat rolled on the ground. Then Dandy began going round the show grounds. He stopped and sniffed at everything. "Oh see!" said Peggy, "Dandy is looking with his nose!" Soon Dandy sniffed at the box and found the ear of corn. "Come, Dandy, come!" called Showman Bob. Dandy came trotting up with the ear of corn in his mouth.
The showman now proposed that, when the shower was over, they should pursue the road to Stamford together, it being sometimes the policy of these people to form a sort of league and confederacy. "And the young lady too," observed the gallant bibliopolist, bowing to her profoundly, "and this foreign gentleman, as I understand, are on a jaunt of pleasure to the same spot.
Thou mayst look for thyself," he added, with some little pride, as of a showman exhibiting his stock, and laying hold of the body by the shoulders he turned it over, so that the distorted face gazed up at the sky. Winter started at the sight, unable to repress a cry, for before him was the body of his servant. His wish had indeed been fulfilled; those silent lips would tell no tales.
But Methodism bears the palm, though Presbyterianism threatens to run it hard in the person of John McNeill. Hugh Price Hughes is a very smart showman. When truth is stale he is ready with a bouncing lie, and has "face" enough to keep it up in five chapters. But the West-End Mission is getting rather tame. The dukes and duchesses are not yet converted.
But they had come to it. We also attended the theater frequently, like the Chatham and the Olympic. But most wonderful of all was Barnum's Museum, in which that great showman had collected dwarfs and giants, fat women and human skeletons. I felt impelled to hurry to Chicago, but Dorothy wanted to shop and so we stayed on.
"I hope I am not depriving you of your meal?" questioned Phil, glancing up quickly. "I've had my breakfast. If there had been only enough for one, you'd have gone hungry." "You don't have to tell me that. I know it. That's about your measure." "That will be about all from you," snapped the showman. "The trouble with you is that you can't appreciate decent treatment. You're just like your boss."
Ordinarily, give a showman the first week or two of the show's route and he will tell you just what parts of the country the show will visit during that particular season. The performers were unable to do so in this instance. Phil Forrest was as much perplexed as the others, but he made no mention of this to Mr. Sparling. "He has some surprise up his sleeve, I am sure," decided Phil shrewdly.
Eventually the great showman left the town in something of a hurry to escape notoriety that promised to be dangerous, but he had done a record six-days' business, and was content. "But how'd yeh beat the blanky gorilla?" asked the Living Skeleton on the morning after the rescue, as the Missing Link sat in his cage munching preserved fruits presented to him in abundance by the grateful Kit See.
The showman grasped the selectman by the coat-lapel and demanded earnestly: "Didn't you figger it as I did, when you got so you could set up and take notice, that she wasn't all right in her head?" "Softer'n a jelly-fish!" declared the Cap'n, with unction. "Then she's got crazier, and up all of a sudden and followed us and don't care which one she gets!"
Now and again when there chanced to be a fair at Portsdown Hill, or when a passing raree showman set up his booth in the village, my dear mother would slip a penny or two from her housekeeping money into my hand, and with a warning finger upon her lip would send me off to see the sights.
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