"Oh, Jerry! Don't go!" pleaded Celia Jane.

"You stay an' be audience for this circus," said Danny quickly, "an'

I'll give you one of my tops."

Jerry returned to the fence. "The one with the red on it?" he asked.

"No, the other one."

"It's broken," Jerry objected.

"An' I'll give you two fishhooks," Danny hurriedly promised, "an' a line an' pole, an' a horseshoe nail."

"The rusty one!" cried Jerry, in a tone that was sarcastic.

Danny hesitated, swallowed quickly and responded, "No, the shiny one."

"I don't want no fishin' pole an' all," said Jerry; "an' the broken top an' the shiny horseshoe ain't enough."

"I'll give you my toy pistol," said Danny.

"The trigger's gone," Jerry objected, "an' a pistol ain't no good without a trigger."

"The golf ball I found in the weeds," Danny offered.

"I don't know how to play golf."

"Aw, be reasonable, Jerry. I can't give you what you want. I bought it with the money I got for mowin' old man Barnes's yard for a month."

"I'll be the audience for your white rabbit," Jerry bargained, "an' I won't run away."

"You want too much," Danny objected. "'Tain't as if I could get another rabbit right away."

"An' then Mother 'Larkey won't think you made me run away," pursued Jerry, pressing home his advantage. "I won't say nothin' to her nohow about that."

Danny did not reply at once and Jerry spoke again.

"You can keep your top an' your shiny horseshoe nail, too."

"You won't say nothin' to mother a-tall?" Danny weakened.

"No," Jerry a.s.sured him.

"Cross your heart, hope to die an' spit?"

"Cross my heart, hope to die an' spit," repeated Jerry, suiting the action to the word.

"All right, you can have the ole rabbit. You'll have to feed it, though.

I wouldn't raise my finger to feed it, not if it was starvin' to death.

I'd got kinda sick of always havin' to feed it whenever I wanted to do something else, anyway."

"All right, I'll be the audience," Jerry promised, "but the rabbit's mine."

"Then go in the house and put away your cap an' coat an' mittens, so's mother won't suspect nothin'. An', Chris, don't you dare ever tell, nor you, Nora, nor you, Celia Jane. I'll get even with you if it takes to my last livin' day if you do."

"We won't ever tell," his brother and sisters a.s.sured him.

Jerry flew back to the house, and put away his winter clothes and the cloth dog Kathleen had given him, and then dashed out to the circus ground and climbed upon an old barrel which Danny and Chris had turned upside down for a seat. He kicked his heels against its sides and whistled as best he could as a sign of the audience's impatience for the circus to begin.

"We'll begin all over again," announced Danny and marshaled his three fellow performers back to the woodshed and led them forth in parade to the strains of "I Went to the Animal Fair." Jerry duly applauded the parade and waited for the real performance.

Then the green elephant rose up on his hind legs and with one front leg pushed his trunk to one side while the voice of Danny Mullarkey announced, "Ladies and gents, I'm pleased to make you acquainted with Flora, the lady tight-rope walker, who will now walk the tight rope for you an' I hope you'll like her."

This time, by dragging one end of her balancing pole on the ground as she walked forward on the rope, Nora, or, as the circus-master called her, Flora, managed to walk the ten feet to the opposite post without falling off.

Jerry, rejoicing over the possession of the white rabbit, applauded her generously.

"The el'funt will now jump the fence," came the voice of Danny, issuing from the mouth of the green elephant. "Hey, you kids! Get the boards for the fence," he called to Chris and Celia Jane, who had sat down on the ground while Nora walked the rope.

With a front foot, the elephant put his trunk in place and took a curious little huddled run on all fours up to the very low fence made of two boards, together not more than ten inches high, which Chris and Celia Jane held for him, and then half rose on his hind legs and leaped over the fence, palm-leaf-fan-ears flopping and brown trunk and blue tail wobbling. No elephant jumping up into the sky and balancing the moon on the end of his trunk was this, truly, but, Jerry thrilled at the first jump, imagining what it might have been.

"Whee!" trumpeted the elephant as he turned back and jumped the fence again. He seemed to develop a very pa.s.sion for wheeing and jumping the fence, returning to the charge again and again.

Jerry clapped his hands and kicked the sides of the barrel in approval and laughed at the ungainly antics of the jumping elephant, but by dint of the frequent repet.i.tion of the jumping he began to become disappointed that Danny didn't jump higher. He grew tired of the performance before Danny wearied of jumping the fence.

"It's my turn now!" Chris called, after Danny had jumped for the twelfth time. "Come on, Celia Jane."

They dropped the fence and, as there was nothing for the green elephant to jump unless he could clear the tight rope, two feet from the ground, Danny perforce gave way to the dancing pony and the clown.

Chris was trying to crack an old whip which he and Danny had made by braiding three strands of leather, with a "cracker" at the end, and Celia Jane was dancing gracefully about the ring, her tail switching and her mane blowing, when the unexpected voice of Darn Darner from the alley brought the circus to a sudden halt.

"Hullo! What do you kids think you're doin'?" he asked, in the gruff voice which he adopted when he wanted to be particularly disagreeable.

Jerry squirmed around on the barrel until he could see Darn. "We're playin' circus," he answered with a feeble, placating smile, before the others had recovered from their surprise.

"Yah! You call _that_ a circus? Chris can't even crack the whip."

"I can, too, sometimes," Chris disputed.

"I'll show you how to do it," Darn offered, clambering over the fence.

"Here, give me the whip!"

He took it out of Chris's surprised and reluctant fingers and began circling it over his head and giving it a sudden jerk. It didn't crack at first, but soon he got the knack of it and cracked it loudly as close to Celia Jane's ears and ankles as he could come without touching her.

"Giddap!" he commanded the dancing pony. "Show your paces." That time he tried to crack the whip too near Celia Jane and the end of the lash wound around her leg.

"Oh! Oh!" cried the dancing pony, hopping about on one leg. "That hurt!

It ain't no fair makin' it crack so close an' I won't play no more."

Half crying from the pain, Celia Jane ran to the house, followed by Nora.