Mullarkey, as they were ready to start. "You can follow the parade out to the circus grounds for the free show outside, but Danny, you keep with Nora and Celia Jane and see that they get home all right."

Jerry didn't see how the circus could be much more fascinating than the parade with all its cages open so you could see the animals. And with the clowns, too, especially the one with the donkey, going through such laughable antics. But he was a little disappointed that the elephants didn't jump a fence or do anything like that during the parade. However, the beautiful ladies in gorgeous raiment who rode in the little houses strapped to the elephants' backs made him forget about their fence-jumping proclivities.

When the parade was over, Jerry and the Mullarkey children, together with a hundred or more small boys and girls, followed the steam-throated calliope through the princ.i.p.al street of the town out to the tents, fascinated by the loudness of the music and the escape of jets of steam as the player fingered the keys. It seemed to Jerry that there couldn't in all the wide world be such heavenly music. Celia Jane and Chris shared his enthusiasm, but Nora confessed to liking a fiddle better and Danny a.s.serted that the music of the trombone was easier on the ears.

The free exhibition on the little platform outside the side-show tent had all the fascination of the unknown for Jerry and Chris and Celia Jane and Nora, but not for Danny, who had been to the vaudeville theater twice and who knew that this outside sample never could come up to the glories to be revealed inside for fifty cents, or a dollar and a half for reserved seats in the boxes, and was critical.

The dancing girl in short skirts and the man with the beard which fell to his feet and the very red-faced snake charmer merely whetted his appet.i.te for what was to come, while to Jerry and the rest of the Mullarkey children it was a substantial part of the feast itself.

The free show seemed to Jerry not to have much more than started when the raucous voice of the ballyhoo announced:

"This, ladies and gents, concludes the free show. The main show will not begin for half an hour, thirty minutes--just time enough to see the side show, the world's greatest congress of freaks and monstrosities. See the sword-swallower from India to whom a steel sword is no more than a string of spaghetti to an Italian. Kelilah, the famous dancer of the Nile, whose graceful contortions have delighted the eyes and moved the hearts of kings. See Major Wee-Wee, the smallest man in the world, no bigger than a two-year-old baby, and Tom Morgan, the giant who stands seven feet three inches in his stocking feet. They are all there--every kind of human freak from the living skeleton to the fat woman who weighs four hundred pounds. The price is the same to one and all--twenty-five cents, only a quarter of a dollar. This way and get your tickets for the side show. There is just time to take in all its wonders before the big show in the main tent begins."

The promise of all these delights proved irresistible to Jerry and Chris and they left the children and were almost first in line, but the ticket taker refused them admittance.

"Those tickets are not good to the side show," he said. "They admit you to the main tent."

Stunned at this disaster, Jerry and Chris slunk under the ropes at the entrance and rejoined Danny and Nora and Celia Jane. They stood in silence as the crowd surged around the ticket seller for the side show and watched the people stream through the door. Never had the lack of "twenty-five cents, only a quarter of a dollar", meant so much to any small boy as it meant to Jerry and Chris. Some of the people were already going into the main tent, pa.s.sing up the glories of the side show. Jerry wondered if they, too, didn't have the necessary quarter of a dollar.

"It would be just grand to see all them freaks," sighed Celia Jane. "If I could only see just half the circus."

Jerry, his ticket still in his hand, looked up and saw Danny glancing covetously at it.

"What'll you take for your ticket?" he asked eagerly. "I'll give you anything of mine you want."

"I won't trade," replied Jerry, stuffing the ticket into his blouse pocket. "I'm a-goin' to see the circus."

Danny made the same proposition to Chris but Chris also refused. There was nothing of Danny's that could compensate Jerry or Chris for missing the circus, especially when they were right there on the ground with their tickets in their hands.

After the crowd had disappeared--part into the side show, part into the main tent, some to their homes and some to wander about the grounds--Jerry and Chris were debating whether they should go into the big tent at once or wait until time for the main performance, when they observed Danny, who had edged away from them, talking in a low voice to Celia Jane. From the motion of Celia Jane's head and the entreating position of Danny's hands, they knew she was refusing some request of his.

If they had not just then become absorbed in watching some circus employee leading two big, fat, white horses out of a tent they would have seen Celia Jane's negative shakes of the head become weaker as Danny's att.i.tude became more and more commanding, and all that occurred afterward might never have happened. But they didn't look around.

When the horses had disappeared, Jerry spoke:

"They might start early," he said. "Let's go in now, Chris."

"All right, let's," Chris replied.

They turned to tell the other Mullarkey children good-by and saw that Celia Jane was crying. Her shoulders shook and she seemed to be in the utmost despair.

"What's the matter with Celia Jane?" Chris asked.

"I don't know," said Nora. "What ails her, Danny?"

"I don't know," Danny a.s.serted quickly. "What're you cryin' for, Celia Jane?"

"I want to see the circus," sobbed Celia Jane. She raised her face and there were tears running down it.

"You ain't got no ticket, have you?" asked Danny. "Nor fifty cents?"

"N-n-no," sobbed Celia Jane.

"Then there ain't no chance at all of your gettin' in, is there?"

"I ain't never seen no circus," moaned Celia Jane.

"Come on, Jerry," said Chris; "let's go in now, so's we won't miss anything if they start early."

At that Celia Jane started crying harder than ever and Jerry stood still, a curious something making his heart beat faster and his throat growing all choky.

"Let's go home, Celia Jane," proposed Nora, in a soothing tone. "Mebbe next time we can go. They might let us carry water for the elephants and earn a ticket to the circus, even if we are girls."

"I want to see it now," sobbed Celia Jane.

Jerry began to feel sort of shuddery inside and his mouth puckered up the way it did when he felt like crying.

He was awfully sorry that Celia Jane didn't have a ticket too. He knew he would be crying out of sympathy if Celia Jane kept on that way, and started towards Chris, who had gone halfway towards the entrance to the tent and then had stopped to wait for him. His joy at the thought of what he was going to witness was clouded through the fact that Celia Jane could not see and enjoy it too. He walked very slowly towards Chris and looked back at Celia Jane.

"Oh, J-J-Jerry!" cried the weeping girl, "I-I-I want to see the circus too."

At that appeal Jerry felt as though his heart had stopped beating and was sinking down into his bare feet. He winked hard to keep the tears from coming. He just couldn't bear to see Celia Jane so heartbroken about not being able to see the circus.

"You can have my t-t-ticket," he said slowly and pulled the treasured bit of blue cardboard out of his pocket. There were tears in his eyes but he walked slowly to Celia Jane, holding out the ticket to her.

"Oh, Jerry!" cried Celia Jane. "Will you really give it to me of your own free will?"

Jerry couldn't speak at first. He nodded his head, but Celia Jane just took one end of the ticket between her fingers.

"Do you give it to me, Jerry?" she asked, in a voice in which there was no trace of weeping. Yet the tears stood on her face.

"Yes," said Jerry at last and let go of the ticket. "You can have it, Celia Jane."

"Then I give it to Danny," said Celia Jane and straightway handed the ticket to Danny, who s.n.a.t.c.hed it and ran to the entrance of the main tent.

Jerry was so surprised at the treachery of Celia Jane after her recent evidences of affection and at the suddenness of it all that he could not even cry out,--could do nothing but stare after Danny. He saw the precious bit of pasteboard taken from Danny's outstretched hand by the ticket-taker and dropped into a box and then saw Chris give up his ticket and go in.

"Celia Jane!" he heard Nora cry, "I'm going to tell mother what you did to Jerry. You'll catch it."

"Danny!" Jerry at last found his voice, and it rose in a forlorn wail.

"The ticket is mine! Danny!"

Jerry had forgotten how easily Celia Jane could make the tears come whenever she liked, no matter if she didn't really want to cry. He would show that Celia Jane that she had gone too far this time. He didn't know what he would do, but turned to go to her. As he did so, a crowd of persons going to the circus pa.s.sed between them and when they had pa.s.sed he saw Celia Jane running for home with Nora following at a slower pace.

"Why, what's the matter, little boy? Why are you crying?" he heard a man ask.

Jerry felt the hot tears of bitter disappointment coming and he did not want all those persons to see him crying. So he turned and ran blindly around the big tent; when he was alone he flung himself down on the ground and sobbed out his grief, with face pressed into the gra.s.s.

Never, never, never would he forgive Celia Jane for her perfidy,--nor Danny either for taking the ticket, when he knew that it had been given to Celia Jane because Jerry thought she was really crying because she wanted to see the circus. He would really run away this time. He would run away without going back to tell Mother 'Larkey and Kathleen and Nora good-by.