The Circus Comes to Town Part 11

"I didn't mean to hurt you," Darn called to Celia Jane. "The whip must be a little too long, or I wouldn't have sized up the distance wrong."

He turned to Danny. "What do you think you are?"

"I'm a el'funt," said Danny proudly, "an' I jump the fence like the circus el'funt."

"An el'funt!" cried Darn, turning his eyes up to the sky. "And he calls that an' el'funt!"

"It is a el'funt," protested Jerry.

Darn Darner laughed derisively.

"You can 'maginary it's a el'funt," Chris explained.

"It would take some imagination," was Darn's only comment on that.

"What's wrong with it?" asked Danny. "I bet you couldn't do any better."

"What's wrong with it!" exclaimed Darn. "Ask me what's right with it.

Everything's wrong with it."

"It looks like the picture of the el'funt--almost," defended Jerry.

"It looks as much like that as I do like a giraffe."

Danny turned his back on Darn and the latter exclaimed:

"What's that blue pants leg for, hangin' down from your coat tail?"

"Why--why--that's the el'funt's tail," Danny replied reluctantly.

"My gorry!" cried Darn, giving way to shrieks of laughter so that he had to sit down on the ground and double up with the paroxysms of mirth.

"_An el'funt's tail!_ Oh, my gorry!" and again he rocked back and forth, holding his sides. Then he was attacked by a fit of coughing and finally, when he got his breath, he said:

"Don't you kids know nothing of national history? Hain't you ever seen a picture of an el'funt? Its tail is nothing like that a-tall."

"How's it different?" Danny asked in a very meek voice.

"It's small and round, like a rope," Jerry interposed quickly.

"Of course it is," was Darn's comment.

"I told him so!" exclaimed Jerry.

"But how'd I know that you knew," asked Danny, aggrieved, "when you didn't know how you knew?"

"I don't know," was all the explanation that Jerry could give.

"All I can say is, you'd better study national history, Danny, and learn how the four-footed friends of man are made," remarked Darn.

"How do _you_ know el'funts' tails are small and round?" asked Chris.

"Because I'm no dumb-head and learn things."

"I ain't no dumb-head," protested Chris and at the same time Danny a.s.serted:

"Chris ain't no dumb-head."

Jerry saw the green elephant's front feet double up and he jumped down from the barrel, a little bit scared.

"He is, too," said Darn, "and so are you. Jerry Elbow there's got more sense than both of you put together, even if he ain't got no father and mother."

"I haven't either," said Jerry. "I jest somehow knew one thing Danny didn't about el'funts' tails. Danny knows lots more'n I do."

"I guess you'd better take that back about Chris bein' a dumb-head,"

threatened Danny, scowling from under the elephant's trunk.

"An' you'd better take it back about Danny's bein' one," remarked Chris.

"I won't any such thing," retorted Darn.

"We'll make you," challenged Danny, all his Irish fighting blood up.

"I'd like to see the kid could make me do anything I didn't want to,"

and Darn doubled up his fists and flung them out in the air at an imaginary adversary.

"I'll show you," Danny boasted and quickly divested himself of the elephant's skin.

"Take a board," cautioned Chris, "an' then you can keep him from runnin'

in on you." Chris followed his own advice and Darn, seeing himself attacked from two sides, one of his foes armed, decided he would live to fight another day and scrambled over the fence.

"Yah!" he cried in derision from the alley. "Dumb-heads! Dumb-heads! Oh, Chris, you blue-eyed beauty, turn around and do your duty! Blue-eyed beauty!"

He dodged just in time to avoid the board which Chris, incensed at that most horrible of epithets--for his eyes were blue--had hurled at him with all his might.

"Ole Danny dumb-head! Blue-eyed beauty! Ole Danny dumb-head! Blue-eyed beauty!" chanted Darn, thrusting his face between two palings of the fence and sticking out his tongue.

Then Danny picked up a board and, flanked by Chris, advanced to the fence, whereat Darn took to his heels, shouting, "Blue-eyed beauty! Ole Danny dumb-head!" as loud as he could.

At the end of the alley he turned and shouted,

"A pants' leg for an el'funt's tail! Oh, my gorry!"

When he disappeared from sight, the three boys surveyed the elephant's skin lying on the ground.

"Let's not play any more," said Danny.

"I'm tired of the ole circus, anyway," replied Chris.

They went into the house, Jerry slowly following them. Even he could not 'maginary the old green wrapper and the stuffed brown coat sleeve and blue trouser leg into an elephant any more.