ked.

Pony did not know what to say, but Jim Leonard nodded; perhaps he did not
know what to say, either; but Pony felt as if they had both told a lie.

"Parents living?" The circus man looked at Pony, and Pony had to say that
they were.

He gasped out, "Yes," so that you could scarcely hear him, and the circus
man said:

"Well, that's right. When we take an orphan, we want to have his parents
living, so that we can go and ask them what sort of a boy he is."

He looked at Pony in such a friendly, smiling way that Pony took courage
to ask him whether they would want him to drink burnt brandy.

"What for?"

"To keep me little."

"Oh, I see." The circus man took off his hat and rubbed his forehead with
a silk handkerchief, which he threw into the top of his hat before he put
it on again. "No, I don't know as we will. We're rather short of giants
just now. How would you like to drink a glass of elephant milk every
morning and grow into an eight-footer?"

Pony said he didn't know whether he would like to be quite so big; and
then the circus man said perhaps he would rather go for an India-rubber
man; that was what they called the contortionists in those days.

"Let's feel of you again." The circus man took hold of Pony and felt his
joints. "You're put together pretty tight; but I reckon we could make you
do if you'd let us take you apart with a screw-driver and limber up the
pieces with rattlesnake oil. Wouldn't like it, heigh? Well, let me see!"
The circus man thought a moment, and then he said: "How would
double-somersaults on four horses bareback do?"

Pony said that would do, and then the circus man said: "Well, then, we've
just hit it, because our double-somersault, four-horse bareback is just
going to leave us, and we want a new one right away. Now, there's more
than one way of joining a circus, but the best way is to wait on your
front steps with your things all packed up, and the procession comes along
at about one o'clock in the morning and picks you up. Which'd you rather
do?"

Pony pushed his toe into the turf, as he always did when he was ashamed,
but he made out to say he would rather wait out on the front steps.

"Well, then, that's all settled," said the circus man. "We'll be along,"
and he was going away with his dog, but Jim Leonard called after him:

"You hain't asked him whereabouts he lives."

The circus man kept on, and he said, without looking around, "Oh, that's
all right. We've got s