it was
something that pleased the crowd.

Up went Otto, in his blanket, to the front place, frightened, but not
hurt, and Sonny Boy held him securely, and the crowd went wild!

Above all its noise a shrill voice suddenly came to Sonny Boy's ears.

"Cock-a-doodle-doo! Aren't you stuck up?"

And if there wasn't Polly, in a great gilt cage, swinging high above the
Fat Lady's chariot!

Polly had been calling out the names of all the wonders in the show, as
she had been taught, but when she saw Sonny Boy she remembered old times.
She shouted out all the patriotism she knew, and the band played Yankee
Doodle, and the people said that the best was what was not down in the
bills.

Otto had his one good time! One would scarcely have known him, his face
was so bright and rosy.

It was almost a miracle that he had not been killed under the buffalo's
hoofs, but the ride did not hurt him in the least. And he is still telling
the hospital children, over and over again, all the wonders of that
procession in which he rode to the end of the route on the buffalo, and
then back to the tent in the Fat Lady's chariot! For Sonny Boy found the
Wild Man both a kind and influential friend.

He has learned to be a Wild Man himself; there was a show in the Plummers'
barn, at Poppleton, in the fall, that many people thought equal to a
grown-up circus, and the Wild Man was the chief attraction.

[Illustration: "CAPTAIN SONNY BOY PLUMMER."]

But none of the Plummers were so much surprised that Sonny Boy had learned
to be a Wild Man as they were that he had learned spelling and fractions
and straightened out his stooping shoulders and his bow-legs!

Sonny Boy explained that he had done it to help a slower and a crookeder
boy than himself. And when Otto came down to Poppleton to pay Sonny Boy a
visit they understood a little better.

Lena came, too, and they brought the white mice, and those skillful
performers took part in the barn show.

Sonny Boy and Otto still think there was nothing in the "Wonder of the
World" to beat those white mice.

Within a week after he returned to Poppleton, Tom told Sonny Boy that if
he would only join the Guards as the fellows wanted him to he would surely
be chosen captain!

"It would sound well--'Captain Sonny Boy Plummer, of the Poppleton
Guards,'" said Tom. And when I last heard from Poppleton that was what
Sonny Boy was called--Captain Sonny Boy Plummer, of the Poppleton Guards!

And every one o