seen, with a big nose and dark complected, and his name was Tobias. The
other was heavier and blonde complected. His name was Dobbs, he said,
and they was the Blanchet Brothers. Doctor Kirby and them got real well
acquainted in about three minutes. We drove on ahead and got into the
town first.

The doctor says that balloon is jest wasted on them fellers. They can't
go up in her, not knowing that trade, but still they ought to be some
way fur them to make a little stake out of it before it was sold.

The next evening we run acrost them fellers on the street, and they was
feeling purty blue. They hadn't been able to sell that team and wagon,
which it was eating its meals reg'lar in a livery stable, and they had
been doing stunts in the street that day and passing around the hat, but
not getting enough fur to pay expenses.

"Where's the balloon?" asts the doctor. And I seen he was sicking his
intellects onto the job of making her pay.

"In the livery stable with the wagon," they tells him.

He says he is going to figger out a way to help them boys. They is like
all circus performers, he says--they jest knows their own acts, and
talks about 'em all the time, and studies up ways to make 'em better,
and has got no more idea of business outside of that than a rabbit. We
all went to the livery stable and overhauled that balloon. It was an
awful job, too. But they wasn't a rip in her, and the parachute was jest
as good as new.

"There's no reason why we can't give a show of our own," says Doctor
Kirby, "with you boys and Danny and me and that balloon. What we want
is a lot with a high board fence around it, like a baseball grounds,
and the chance to tap a gas main." He says he'll be willing to take a
chancet on it, even paying the gas company real money to fill her up.

What the Doctor didn't know about starting shows wasn't worth knowing.
He had even went in for the real drama in his younger days now and then.

"One of my theatrical productions came very near succeeding, too," he
says.

It was a play he says, in which the hero falls in love with a pair of
Siamese twins and commits suicide because he can't make a choice between
them.

"We played it as comedy in the big towns and tragedy in the little
ones," he says. "But like a fool I booked it for two weeks of
middle-sized towns and it broke us."

The next day he finds a lot that will do jest fine. It has been used fur
a school playgrounds, but the school has bee