Oh, bliss! In another moment I was at her feet--sitting on the plank
next lower than that which held her lovely form, with the dainty
billows of lace and organdie rippling around me, and her little toes
pressed into the small of my back. Was this a common, vulgar
circus--with a menagerie attachment? To me it was the seventh heaven.
The clown leaped lightly into the ring, cracked his whip, and began
his witticisms. I heard him as one hears the murmur of the sea in his
dreams. The beautiful bare-back rider galloped, ran, jumped, smiled,
kissed her hand, and trotted off the stage with Master Clown at her
heels and the whole scene was to me only as a scene in a painting on
which my eye casually fell. The only living, breathing fact of which
I was really conscious was that those blue eyes were shining like
stars just over my head.

In the pauses of the drama, the lemonade man went by. What was he to
me, or I to him? Noisy boys or verdant farming youths might patronize
him at their will--I slaked my thirst with deep draughts of a nectar
no lemonade-fellow could dispense at two cents a glass. While the
cannon-ball man was catching a ten-pound ball between his teeth, and
the boneless boy was tying himself in a double bow-knot, I was
pleasing myself with images of the darling little Spitz I would seek,
purchase, and present to Miss Flora in place of the one who had
thoughtlessly swallowed my fish-hook.

"Were you ever in love, young man?" suddenly asked the clown, after
the india-rubber athlete had got tired of turning himself, like a
dozen flap-jacks on a hot griddle.

The question startled me. I looked up. It seemed to me, as he eyed me,
that he had addressed it particularly to me. I blushed. Some strange
country girls on either side of me began to titter. I blushed more
decidedly. The motley chap in the ring must have seen it. He grinned
from ear to ear, walked up to the very edge of the rope, and repeated:

"Were you ever in love, young man?"

There were young men all round me; he might have looked at
Knickerbocker, or any one of a dozen others; if I had not been
supersensitive I never should have imagined that he meant to be
personal.

If I had not retained the self-possession of an egotist, I should have
reflected that it was not the thing to notice the vulgar wit of a
circus-clown. Unfortunately self-possession is the last possession of
a bashful man. I half rose from my seat, demanding fiercely:

"Are you spea