d
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 Tim 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 somebody that looks after that."

"It's the magician," Jim Leonard whispered to Pony, and they walked
away.

THE CIRCUS MAGICIAN

A crowd of the fellows had been waiting to know what the boys had been
talking about to the circus man, but Jim Leonard said, "Don't you tell,
Pony Baker!" and he started to run, and that made Pony run, too, and
they both ran till they got away from the fellows.

"You have got to keep it a secret; for if a lot of fellows find it out
the constable'll get to know it, and he'll be watching out around the
corner of your house, and when the procession comes along and he sees
you're really going he'll take you up, and keep you in jail till your
father comes and bails yo