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At first they tumbled, turned somersaults, climbed on each other's shoulders and assumed attitudes which I should have said beforehand were impossible for any creature with bones. Then a large net was stretched some six feet from the ground and several trapezes which had been tied to the roof were allowed to hang down. The acrobats climbed up by a ladder and swung from one trapeze to another.
When the net was cleared away and the trapezes slung up again in the roof, we had a musical ride, performed by six men and six women mounted on very shiny horses. Mrs. Ascher, of course, objected strongly to the music. I could see her squirming in her seat. Ascher did not find the thing interesting and began to fidget.
He saw Joe Strong and the other two Lascallas on the trapezes high up above the life net. This the trapeze performers had inspected with unusual care, for it was the opening act of the season and, as Sid had said, some of the attendants who put it up might have been careless, particularly as a lot of new men were always hired at the beginning of the season.
Then the sand was spread over the bottom, the steps, by which Joe reached a little platform on the edge of the water-filled tank, were put in place, and the act was nearly "set." "Well, I guess I can't do much more with it now," thought Joe as he saw the tank completed. "I'd better see about my trapezes."
A chimpanzee, with a solicitation more than human, was solemnly searching a friend for fleas in the midst of a pandemonium of chattering and screeching and chasing, of rattling of bars and trapezes carried on by their companions. "Well, young ladies," said a voice, "come to pay a call on your relations have ye?" Eda giggled hysterically. An elderly man was standing beside them.
There were fourteen of them, curled up in large cages standing against the walls. The place was lit by a skylight and warmed by a stove. The floor, like a stage, was fitted up with miniature acrobatic paraphernalia and properties. There were little five-barred gates, and trapezes, and tight-ropes, and spring-boards, and a trestle-table, all the metal work gleaming like silver.
As he crossed to another part of the tent he saw Helen giving some orders about a few pieces of apparatus she used in her tricks with Rosebud. "Well, Joe," asked the girl, "you haven't caught any more hippos, have you?" "No, Helen, one a day is enough. How is everything with you?" "All right. I'm going to give Rosebud his sugar." "I'll walk along with you. I'm going to see about my trapezes."
Silence again while the elephants did amazing things in one ring, with Japanese tumblers in another, with piebald ponies beyond, and things being done on trapezes everywhere. Teddy slipped his hand into Derry's. "It's it's almost like having Daddy," he confided. "I know he's glad I'm here." Derry's big hand closed over the small one. "I'm glad, too, old chap."
They had put up trapezes and bars, on which they could do all sorts of tricks, such as hanging by their hands, by their heels and even by their chins. No one except themselves knew what Bunny and his sister Sue were going to do. The children had kept their secret well. They had asked their grandma for two old bed sheets, and she had let them take the white pieces of cloth.
The plain stretched far and wide, covered with nothing but flowering thyme and rounded pebbles. There was ample scope for every imaginable polygon; trapezes and triangles could be combined in all sorts of ways. The inaccessible distances had ample elbow-room; and there was even an old ruin, once a pigeon-house, that lent its perpendicular to the graphometer's performances.
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