elf to be kicked and knocked about--always
landing in positions so excruciatingly droll that you quite forgot to
ask if he were hurt. All the ladies who galloped round the ring, and
did such marvellous things, treating a mettled steed as though he were
as motionless as a kitchen table, seemed to Norah models of beauty and
grace. There was one who set her heart beating by her daring, for she
not only leaped through a paper-covered hoop, but through three, one
after the other, and then--marvel of marvels--through one on which the
paper was alight and blazing fiercely! Norah held her breath, expecting
to see her scorched and smouldering at the very least; but the heroic
rider galloped on, without seeming so much as singed. Almost as
wonderful was the total indifference of the horses to the strange
sights around them.

"Bobs would be off his head!" said Norah.

She was especially enchanted with a small boy and girl who rode in on
the same brown pony, and had all sorts of capers, as much off the pony's
back as upon it. Not that it troubled them to be off, because they
simply ran, together, at the pony, and landed simultaneously, standing
on his back, while the gallant steed galloped the more furiously. They
hung head downwards while the pony jumped over hurdles, to their great
apparent danger; they even wrestled, standing, and the girl pitched the
boy off to the accompaniment of loud strains from the band and wild
cheers from Cunjee. Not that the boy minded--he picked himself up and
raced the pony desperately round the ring--the girl standing and
shrieking encouragement, the pony racing, the boy scudding in front,
until he suddenly turned and bolted out of the ring, the pony following
at his heels, but never quite catching him--so that the boy really won,
after all, which Norah thought was quite as it should be.

Then there were the acrobats--accomplished men in tight clothes--who cut
the most amazing somersaults, and seemed to regard no object as too
great to be leaped over. They brought in the horses, and stood ever so
many of them together, backed up by the elephant, and the leading
acrobat jumped over them all without any apparent effort. After which
all the horses galloped off of their own accord, and "put themselves
away" without giving anyone any trouble. Then the acrobats were hauled
up into the top of the tent, where they swung themselves from rope to
rope, and somersaulted through space; and one man hung head dow