The Circus Comes to Town.

by Lebbeus Mitch.e.l.l.

CHAPTER I

"ASK YOUR MOTHER FOR FIFTY CENTS"

The apple seemed to Jerry Elbow too big to be true.

He held it out at arm's length to get a good squint at its bigness and its redness. Then he turned to look wonderingly after the disappearing automobile with the lady who had tossed him the apple for directing her to the post office. A long trail of dust rose from the unpaved street behind the motor car.

Next he addressed himself to the business of eating the apple. He rubbed it shiny against his patched trousers, carefully hunted out the reddest spot on it, and took a big, luscious bite. Instead of chewing the morsel at once, he crushed it against his palate just to feel the mellowness of it and to get the full flavor of the first taste of juice. Then he chewed vigorously.

He started on to Mother 'Larkey's where he had made his home for nearly three years, ever since Mr. Mullarkey, dead this year now, had found him by the roadside one dark night. He had just started to take a second bite when a shout stopped him.

"Hi, Jerry! What you got?"

Instinctively Jerry hid the apple behind him, for it was Danny Mullarkey's voice that he had heard.

"Jerry's got something to eat!" Danny called over his shoulder to some one out of sight. "Come on, kids!"

Jerry hastily swallowed the piece of apple in his mouth and bit off the very largest chunk he could. He knew by long and bitter experience how little would be left for him after the Mullarkey brood had all nibbled at it.

Danny, who was past nine, reached him before Jerry could gulp down that mouthful and take another bite, as he had intended to do. Chris and Nora followed at Danny's heels, with Celia Jane, as usual, far in the rear.

"Save me a bite, Jerry!" called Celia Jane.

"Give me a bite of your apple, Jerry," coaxed Danny.

"Me, too," echoed Chris.

"It looks awful nice," observed Nora. "Where'd you get it?"

Jerry explained and handed her the apple first because she had not asked for a bite. Nora bit off a small piece and was pa.s.sing it on to Celia Jane, who ran panting up to them, when Jerry stopped her by urging:

"Take a bigger bite than that, Nora. I want you to."

"Not till after you've had your turn again," replied Nora, who was nearly eight and was celebrated in the Mullarkey household for a finer sense of fair play than any of the others possessed.

Celia Jane was greedy and bit off so big a chunk that she could not cram it into her mouth, despite her heroic efforts to accomplish that feat.

"That ain't fair, Celia Jane," reproved Nora. "Mother told you never to do that again."

"That's _two_ bites!" cried Danny. "Take it out and bite it in two."

Celia Jane's mouth was too full for utterance. She held out the apple to Danny, then freed her mouth of its embarra.s.sment of riches and proceeded to bite it in two.

"Here, Chris," invited Danny, "take your bite next."

Jerry became immediately suspicious at such unaccustomed politeness on Danny's part and he was not at all surprised when Danny, once the remainder of the apple was again in his hands, took to his heels.

"Save me a bite!" cried Celia Jane, swallowing the morsel in her mouth so quickly that she came near to choking, and tagged after her older brother as fast as she could run.

"Danny!" cried Jerry. "That's no fair!"

He started to run after the vanishing apple, but was quickly pa.s.sed, first by Chris and then by Nora, who called back to him: "Maybe I can save the core for you, Jerry."

Bitterness arose in Jerry's soul. He knew that he couldn't catch up with Danny, but he kept on running. That old, odd feeling that he did not belong to the Mullarkeys, though living with them, came over him again, and he had already begun to slow down his pace when he was brought to a full and sudden stop by a picture blazoned on a billboard.

He stared spellbound, without even winking. Of all delectable things, it was the picture of an elephant! A purple elephant jumping over a green fence, its trunk raised high in the air until it almost touched the full, red moon at the top of the poster. The elephant had such a roguish and knowing look in his small eyes and such a smirk on his funny little mouth that Jerry began to smile without being the least bit conscious that he was doing so.

The smile kept spreading in complete understanding of the look on the elephant's face and he probably would have laughed aloud had not the picture somehow made him think of something, he couldn't just remember what. A dim idea seemed to be trying to break into his mind but couldn't find the right door. In his effort to puzzle out what it was the elephant made him think of, Jerry entirely forgot the large red apple and the perfidy of Danny.

"What're you lookin' at?" called Danny, who had stopped half a block farther on when he no longer heard Jerry's pursuing footsteps.

Jerry did not answer. Instead, he squatted down on the gra.s.sy bank between the sidewalk and the billboard and feasted his eyes on that delightfully extravagant elephant which seemed almost to wink at him.

Jerry half expected to see the elephant grab the moon and balance it on the end of his trunk, or toss it up into the sky and catch it again as it fell.

"Come on, Jerry, if you want the core," called Danny again. "That's all that's left."

"Don't want the core," said Jerry. "It was my apple. The lady gave it to me." He didn't even look at Danny but kept staring at the very purple elephant and the very red moon almost on the tip-end of his trunk. He just wouldn't let Danny Mullarkey know that it made any difference to him whether Danny and Chris and Nora and Celia Jane liked him very much or not.

No, and he wouldn't feel so terribly bad if Mother 'Larkey and little Kathleen didn't like him, either.

"You ain't lost your tongue, have you?" cried Danny.

"Maybe the cat's got it," said Celia Jane, following as usual her elder brother's lead and laughing at her own wit.

"What you starin' at so hard, Jerry?" called Chris.

Jerry disdained to reply or to let his enraptured gaze wander for a moment from the dazzling poster. Curiosity soon got the better of Chris and he started to walk back.

"El'funt!" shouted Chris, when he was near enough to see the poster. His shout started the whole Mullarkey brood galloping towards the billboard.

"The circus!" cried Danny, from the superior experience of his nine years. "The circus is coming to town!" He threw himself on the gra.s.s by Jerry and pressed the uneaten apple core into his hand.

"I don't want it," said Jerry.

"Aw, take it, Jerry. I didn't mean to eat so much of it, honest I didn't. I just wanted to tease you." He closed Jerry's fingers around the core.

"It doesn't say the circus is coming," Nora observed, pointing to some lettering in one corner of the poster. Nora was nearly eight years old and proud of her ability to read print, if the words weren't too big,--an ability shared by none of the others except Danny.

"It does, too!" contradicted Celia Jane, wrinkling up her nose preparatory to crying with disappointment if the circus were not coming.

"There's some writin' on it."

"What does it say, Danny?" eagerly asked Jerry, going close to the billboard as though that might help him to make out what was printed on it. "Ain't it coming?"