The Circus Comes to Town Part 4

"Jerry, you're some boy, and there's my hand on it."

Jerry felt himself flus.h.i.+ng as he took the proffered hand which shook his warmly.

"Grit!" exclaimed Mr. Barton. "Pure grit. That's what I call it, if anybody should ask you. And you won't get to see the circus at all."

"I guess Kathleen's cough is more important than the circus," replied Jerry. "Summer coughs are bad for babies."

"You're right there, but I'm mighty sorry you can't go. I know how my two boys will feel if they have to stay away."

He rang up the forty-five cents and returned a nickel to Jerry.

"There, I guess you've earned the right to spend the nickel on yourself."

"Give me a nickel's worth of cough drops--the kind with honey in 'em,"

said Jerry.

"You don't want cough drops, Jerry. Here's some good candy. It's got lots of lemon in it."

"Kathleen likes the cough drops with honey in 'em," explained Jerry.

"She doesn't cough so bad after eating one of them."

"Well, you beat my time, Jerry! You must like Kathleen an awful lot."

"I do," admitted Jerry in a low voice, as a customer entered the store.

He took the bag of cough drops and darted out through the door, but not too quickly to overhear Mr. Barton saying to the man who had entered:

"That boy's got enough sand to supply all the contractors in town.

Plucky as they make 'em."

Jerry was not quite sure that he understood what Mr. Barton meant about the sand, but his saying that he was plucky made him feel glad and uncomfortable at the same time. Somehow it didn't seem quite so hard to have given up seeing the circus. He wouldn't mind not seeing the elephant jump the fence--well, not so very much. He could look at the billboard poster all he wanted to and that would be almost as good.

He started home on a run but soon slackened his speed, and the nearer he got the slower became his pace. He didn't want Danny to know that he had bought something for Kathleen, for Danny called him "Kathleen's pet" as it was and he didn't like to be laughed at. Perhaps he could sneak in without any of them seeing him and put the bottle back on the shelf and no one would know how it got full.

The Mullarkey children were still picking gooseberries and Mother 'Larkey was still in the living room sewing on Mrs. Green's dress. Jerry tiptoed carefully into the kitchen, replaced the bottle, stuffed the cough drops into his blouse pocket and went into the living room, where he squatted down by Kathleen.

Hardly had he done so when the voices of the other children coming back to the house were heard.

"Gooseberries all picked?" sighed Mrs. Mullarkey. "Then I must be getting supper."

When she left the room, Jerry fished a cough drop out of his pocket and gave it to Kathleen. She smiled in delight at sight of it and at once popped it into her mouth, cooing at Jerry.

"Mother, why didn't you make Jerry help pick gooseberries?" asked Danny, as soon as he entered and caught sight of Jerry.

"He can't have any pie, can he, Mother?" said Celia Jane.

"Why, he was out with you," replied Mrs. Mullarkey. "He just this minute came in."

"He wasn't near the gooseberry patch," Danny informed her.

"He didn't pick a single gooseberry," Celia Jane interpolated.

"Nora," appealed their mother, "you always tell the truth. Didn't Jerry help you?"

"I didn't see him, Mother. Ask Jerry."

"Did you help them, Jerry? Not that it makes any difference; you'll get just as big a piece of pie as any of them."

"No'm, I didn't," replied Jerry. His lips parted again as though he wanted to say more but closed without a word.

"You're such a willing worker, I thought Danny was just trying to get even for something," said Mother 'Larkey.

"Where'd you go, Jerry?" asked Chris.

"Yah! Tell us that," demanded Danny.

"I just thought I'd run over to the drug store," replied Jerry.

"What did you want to go there for?"

Jerry said nothing.

"I bet he found a penny and bought himself some candy," cried Celia Jane, falling into the habit that many older people have of judging others by themselves.

"Tandy," said Kathleen, struck by that word, and she pulled the remnant of the cough drop out of her mouth and displayed it proudly.

"Jerry, you ate all the rest yourself!" accused Celia Jane. "Greedy, greedy, greedy!"

"Oh, did um buy some tandy for um's 'ittle Tatleen?" mocked Danny.

"I want some," said Celia Jane. "Mother, make Jerry give me some candy."

"It was cough drops for Kathleen," said Jerry.

"Where'd you get the money?" Danny demanded sharply.

"Found it after you ran home first to ask for fifty cents to see the circus," Jerry explained.

"Gee, I never find nothing!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Danny. "How much was it?"

Jerry did not reply immediately and Celia Jane, watching him sharply, was at once full cry right on his trail.

"I bet it was a whole lot more'n five cents an' he bought something for himself. How much did you find, Jerry?"

"It was half a dollar," Jerry stated, thus brought to bay.

"Half a dollar!" exclaimed Danny and Chris.

"Why, that's fifty cents!" Celia Jane cried.