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Teddy bowed again, and then he set the chest on the ground, and drawing from his girdle an iron key he unlocked it and put back the lid. There was the paper circus, just as he and Harriett had cut it out: the acrobat and the lovely lady, the horses, the clown, the ring-master, not one of them was left out.
But if we practically doubled your salary, Joe, you'd be getting more than some of the married men." "Well, I'm doing a double turn, Mr. Tracy. You've got to think of that." The ring-master scratched his head. Clearly Joe had the best of the argument there. "Well, I guess you're right," Jim Tracy was forced to admit. "Then you'll give me more money?" Joe's voice was eager.
'They're a catch for us, them two! the brutal ring-master remarked to his wife, as he and she sat at their supper after the performance was over one evening. 'That tallest youngster's a swell as has run away from 'ome, judging from his looks and clothes. He's just what we've bin wantin' for a long time back.
Oh, you'd die laughing at the comical remarks he'd make. And he'd be so quick about it. The ring-master would say something, and before you'd think, the clown would make a joke out of it.... I wish I could remember what it was he said that was so funny, the time he started crying. Seems to me it was something about his little brother.... Well, no matter.
Jim Tracy seemed hardly to know whether or not Joe was in earnest. They stood together, a little distance away from the cot on which lay Benny Turton, only just recovering consciousness. "Do you really mean it, Joe?" asked the ring-master. "I certainly do," was the answer. "I don't say I can do all the tricks Ben did, for I haven't practised them. But I may be able to improvise a few of my own."
"Quick now, boys!" urged the ring-master, as he walked along with the clowns who were carrying the half-unconscious form of the water performer. "I don't believe the crowd knows anything about it." And this seemed to be the case.
Through the long summer afternoon it went on: wonders of horsemanship and horsewomanship; hair-raising exploits on wires, tight and slack; giddy tricks on the high trapeze; feats of leaping and tumbling in the rings; while the tireless musicians blatted inspiringly through it all, only pausing long enough to allow that uproarious jester, the clown, to ask the ring-master what he would do if a young lady came up and kissed him on the street, and to exploit his hilarities during the short intervals of rest for the athletes.
They had their preferences, of course, as I have hinted; and one of the most popular acts was that where a horse has been trained to misbehave, so that nobody can mount him; and after the actors have tried him, the ring-master turns to the audience, and asks if some gentleman among them wants to try it.
Three more cutlets. Think of the clowns. They tumble over, they fall from horses, they fail to jump through the rings. They are lashed by the whip of the ring-master. What a lesson in reverence is here. People who jeer, people who make fun, people who parody great works of fiction always and invariably come to a bad end. It will be not only a mammoth circus but a moral circus.
"It was a great act, Joe!" said the ring-master. "It remains to be seen whether she'll do as nicely in public," Joe replied. Joe spent as much time as he could spare before the afternoon performance in practising with Lizzie. The trained seal seemed to have taken naturally to the boy fish and was becoming quite friendly.
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