CHAPTER XII

THE CIRCUS AT HAPPY HILLS

“Mister Uncle Ben, ain’t che goin’ to ask no money fer our circus?” asked Joe Brennan, when he heard of the entertainment.

“Why no, Joe, this is to be a treat given by us to the people who did so much for Little Citizens. It will cost them a lot of money just to get here, as it is.”

“Dey all got autermobiles what dey will use. Dey don’t have to buy car-tickets,” argued Joe.

“The autos use gasoline, you know, and it is a long ride. Besides, Joe, why do you ask such a question. The cash taken in wouldn’t do you any good?” wondered Uncle Ben.

“I was t’inkin’--we could start a fund fer dat city home yeh know--de one you’se said oughter be run fer Little Citizens. I ain’t got no home to live in when I gets back to Noo York and it’s cold in winter, lemme tell you!”

“Joe, I am going to take up that very subject with these people when they get here and show them the good that home-life has done for you all. Now if you will promise to keep this secret, I’ll explain just why I’m anxious to have them see you boys and girls perform and do your best in some way.”

Joe eagerly agreed to keep the secret, and Uncle Ben continued:

“I’ve been planning about that City Home ever since we discovered Maggie could sing and Nelly could design, and some of you boys could play so well on musical instruments. I see that it will be necessary to bring all those interested welfare workers together here to see for themselves just what good a home in the city will do to you all. It isn’t the circus so much, as the idea to get them here and see the improvement in Little Citizens.”

Joe grinned at the confidence shared with him and said he would do all he could to make the show a success.

Uncle Ben then stopped at Mother Maggie’s Nest to ask her which of her songs she had decided to sing at the entertainment. Maggie was so joyously happy at the opportunity to sing in public that she rattled off ten songs, one on each fingertip as she counted--or she would have forgotten some.

“Oh, Mister Uncle Ben, if we only had gold wagons and an elephant! But of course we can’t have such wonders!”

“Some of the boys want a steam calliope to play the music for the parade,” ventured Uncle Ben.

“Hoh never! You woulden’ let any such awful thing come an’ whistle itself to pieces around Happy Hills, would you?” cried Maggie fearfully.

“No; besides, it is impossible to get a calliope without hiring a lot of performers with it, and we are going to supply our own talent, you see.”

“Thank goodness! If one of them screech-enjuns came here I’d run and run till I was out of hearin’ of it!” said Maggie, decidedly.

“I suppose you heard that we are to have wild animals and other wonderful side-shows, eh?” asked Uncle Ben.

“Yes, an’ I wuz thinkin’, Mister Uncle Ben: You’d have to be mos’ pertickler about handlin’ them animals! It takes a man what knows wild beasteses to look after ’em proper. You might git bitten er killed if you don’t look out. I saw some at Central Park Zoo, an’ at the Bronx too, an’ the keeper had to keep safe away from ’em, I _tell you_!”

“My wild animals won’t hurt anyone. In fact the ‘lion shall lie down with the lamb’ and the wolf will never think of killing,” laughed Uncle Ben.

“Is it a joke?”

“If I tell you my secret, will you promise never to tell anyone?” whispered Uncle Ben.

Maggie quickly agreed, and thereupon she heard the most remarkable secret as was yet connected with the circus.

“Oh Mister Uncle Ben! How funny! Won’t everyone laff!” said she after a hearty laugh. But she kept the secret.

Uncle Ben proceeded to the Big House where the Blue Birds and Bobolinks were awaiting him. As he drew near, Miss Selina remarked:

“He’s smiling as if he had something funny to tell us.”

But he said nothing, and all the coaxing and urging to tell what had occurred at Happy Hills to amuse him availed nothing.

While Uncle Ben was training the Blue Birds and Bobolinks to do their part in the circus all unknown to Miss Martin, the latter was gradually absorbing every inhabitant at Happy Hills camp into her company. Even Dinah and her assistants offered to do their share. That share consisted of baking pyramids of good cookies and ginger-snaps, and preparing lemonade, for a stand just beside the entrance to the arena.

If the day was bright and clear, the circus would take place in the clearing where the firemen exhibited their prowess. If it was rainy, it would have to be curtailed in many acts but could be given in part at the Refectory, called “Hippodrome Hall” for the occasion.

The morning dawned bright and cloudless to the great joy and relief of many worrying circus people. The benches were quickly placed at the upper side of the base-ball diamond, and several large canvases borrowed from a house-painter in the nearest town, were hung up as screens for the side-shows.

The Fire-house was decorated with greens and flags but the apparatus was pulled out and left to dazzle all eyes at one side of the building. The inside was to be used for other purposes.

Uncle Ben had supervised his police and firemen in erecting temporary pens behind the canvas screens, and here his wild beasts were to be exhibited. Adjoining the pens were a number of large piano cases raised upon posts so that they were about eighteen inches from the ground. The front sides of these great boxes were gone but wooden laths made “bars to the cages.” On the top facing each box was painted the name of the wild thing within.

The first case was to hold a fierce Numidian lion, said to be the only one ever caught and tamed at Happy Hills. Next to this was a red wolf--a man-eating wolf at that! Then one was to see the wild man from Borneo with a great ring through his nose that he might be made to obey without danger to his keeper.

Then there was to be an Albino girl, and a few savage Zulus with poisoned arrows to shoot at passers-by. There was a placard over one of the cages saying that the strange animal shown was the only one of its kind ever found, and being a native of the Valley of Delight, it was considered as very valuable.

There were other curiosities to see in the side-shows, but the greatest interest centered about the animal cases. The boys who had helped build the cages told the other Little Citizens, and naturally it created much guessing and excitement. Would Mister Uncle Ben really have wild animals there?

Maggie was in the secret, but so well did she keep it that no one even guessed she knew the truth about the plan.

Inside the Fire-house, Uncle Ben and Ned and Jinks worked hard for several hours before circus time, then the door was shut and padlocked to keep out all curious sight-seers.

At two-thirty sharp, the Happy Hills’ Brass Band struck up a patriotic air and the visitors and friends who had assembled to witness the show given by the Little Citizens, hurried to the circus grounds.

The side-shows had to be visited first, as they would not be continued after the general performance began. The Fire-house was the first in the row so, not only visitors, but Little Citizens as well, filed in to see what Uncle Ben had prepared for them.

The side walls of the small building were covered with Navajo blankets and other barbarous-colored draperies. Spears and weapons from Aunt Selina’s cozy-corner and oriental collection were gleaming dangerously from corners. Freshly cut hay was thrown on the floor to make a carpet of green, and upon this sat a group of Hopi Indians. Don and Dot Starr were young ones while Babs was a papoose strapped in a wicker basket and stood up in a corner.

A tent was rigged up in one corner and before this a brave who strongly resembled Meredith, sat smoking a long peace pipe. But no one could see any smoke rising from the bowl or from the lips of the stolid Indian. He was in war-paint and wore all his trophies of scalps and wild beasts’ teeth or skulls, so he seemed savage indeed. Two squaws, one beading a pair of moccasins and another cooking over a camp-fire, were too industrious to look up at the curious visitors.

“The squaw-cook what’s poking at the kettle without any fire burning under it, looks a heap like Miss Lavinia,” whispered Maggie, in a stage-tone.

Everyone laughed and even the squaw had to turn away her face or ruin the effect of the whole Indian village scene. Dot and Don in streaked upper-bodies and gaudy skirts from the waist down, grinned pleasantly at their New York friends, and posed in a true twin-picture when Mr. Richards took a snap-shot of the Hopis.

From the Fire-house the crowds went to the first case: a ferocious lion! Here the visitors saw an astonishing sight! As the truth dawned upon them, the New Yorkers laughed heartily but said nothing that might keep away other curious visitors.

A great lion-skin from Miss Selina’s library had been sewed together so that it appeared as real as when it was alive on the plains of Africa. Inside this skin, Ned had carefully placed himself, and then Uncle Ben had sewn him up in the seam where the two sides of the skin met.

The poor lion must have been frightfully hot inside that skin, and he had to pace up and down the limited cage-room on his hands and feet, for it would never do to stand up on his hind legs and try to get a breath of cool air!

As the sight-seers filed past the lion’s cage, the fierce animal pawed threateningly at the weak, wooden laths which was all that kept him from springing out at the people.

Most of the circus-goers were already past when a strange howl came from the inside of that lion-skin:

“Heigh, Uncle Ben! For pity’s sake rip me out of this--I’m smothering to pieces!”

Some of the visitors were lingering to study the Wild Man from Borneo in the next cage and heard the freak lion that could talk, and everyone laughed uproariously.

Jinks was the “Wild Man” and looked the part, too. Chains of corn and large lima-beans, with here and there a red kidney-bean, strung on strings were profusely hung about his neck. Wide armlets and anklets of tin were wound about his limbs and his hair, which was made of a close-fitted skull-cap with great bunches of hair taken from a mattress found in the attic of Aunt Selina’s house. His face was frightfully scarred with _red crayon_ cuts where he had fought men and beasts and survived; his single garment was a long strip of sheep’s skin wound about his waist. His body was dark red and shiny with oil, and his hands toyed dangerously with barbed arrows and a slender bow that now and then was aimed at his tormentors. Such actions were accompanied with wild grins that showed fierce orange-rind teeth fitted into the mouth of the man-eating human!

The red wolf looked so like Crummie that many of the Little Citizens were tempted to call it by name, and strange to say, the animal acted as if it knew that name! Overhead, however, the placard plainly stated that the red wolf exhibited was one of the dangerous kind found in the Valley of Delight.

“No one kin fool me dat dat’s a wolf! I knows Crummie if no one else does. Diden’ he save my life in de boat dat day of de picnic?” came from Prunel in no weak voice, and everyone laughed again at the poor red wolf. Thereupon the animal wagged its tail.

A strange animal never known to Nature before, was seen in a small case next to the wolf. It was green and red and white streaked, and had a stub tail that was orange colored. The nose was snubbed and a fear-inspiring gleam of teeth projecting from an under-shot jaw would have made one’s flesh creep had the beast been free. But everyone heaved sighs of relief to find Aunt Selina’s old pet Bull dog safely chained in a cage.

“Laws sake! Now how did this dreadful thing happen to poor old Billy. Ben! Ben! did you paint Billy like this?” cried Miss Selina when she saw her dog.

“S-sh! don’t spoil the side-shows!” warned a hissing voice behind her, and Flutey turned to see Mr. Richards’ laughing face close to hers.

“But how will we ever get Billy clean again?” said she.

“It’s only colored grease paint such as movie people use--we’ll drop him in boiling water and soon scald off the paint,” laughed her tormentor.

Meredith Starr was the strongest man on earth and was seen lifting great balls of iron and heavy bars of metal. The spheres he picked up as easily as if they were feathers were marked 5,000 lbs. each, and were as large as a barrel.

“Mr. Richards, do tell me what he is lifting?” queried Aunt Selina.

“Can’t you see they are marked iron?”

“Oh, but they aren’t really! They look like hollow paper cubes bronzed over to look like rusty iron,” replied Flutey.

“Maybe you’re right at that,” laughed Mr. Richards.

The last side-show was a huge cage with a curtain hanging before its opening. On the curtain was a notice stating:

“This is the smallest baby-elephant ever exhibited in a circus, and the visitor is requested not to feed it peanuts or crackers, as it does not yet know how to eat alone.”

Whenever a large crowd gathered before this cage, one of the Police would make a great flourish of drawing back the curtain. Necks would crane and those visitors standing in the back could not see the elephant at all. But a loud shout of merriment would tell all that it was a good joke, so they waited till the others left when they could go closer and see the elephant.

It was a little papier-maché toy-elephant such as are sold at Christmas time for the children’s nursery. There it stood in the center of the great box and beside it was a great dish of water and a huge bundle of hay for food.

The fake side-shows being over, the visitors began to fear their old tease, Mr. Talmage, had played a joke upon them in bringing them so far to witness nothing at all. So they walked away from the cages wondering what would take place next; then a few of the Police directed them to the seats at one end of the diamond.

“What next? Are you going to play a few more jokes on us?” demanded one of the visitors of a Policeman.

“Naw--the reel circus is jus’ goin’ to start! You see Miss Martin has charge of our show whiles Mister Uncle Ben agreed to provide side-shows and wild animals. Now he’s done with his’n.”

“Oh, I see,” said one visitor.

“Thank goodness,” said another.

But the majority of them laughed at the fun and said it was all part of the game as Barnum said: “An American public loves to be fooled.”

Soon after the audience was seated on the hard wooden benches that reminded them of the real circus seats at a dollar a seat, Mr. Richards appeared in the sawdust ring to speak. He was immediately welcomed with shouts and claps and such a noise from his city friends that he could not be heard.

When the tumult died down and he began to speak, the noise would begin anew, and finally he shook his head and stood waiting. The men in the audience finally grew tired of teasing him, however, and he had his say.

It was to the effect that all the talent about to be seen and heard had been found and trained at Happy Hills inside of the past month. All allowance should be made for the handicaps met with in a country camp, but the patrons would find there was plenty of genuine talent in the different performers about to make their first appearance in public as entertainers.