osperity smiled again. The very first audience after the acquisition
of Roderick was larger than the largest of the morning. Master
Bitts--the only exhibit placed upon a box--was a supercurio. All eyes
fastened upon him and remained, hungrily feasting, throughout Penrod's
luminous oration.

But the glory of one light must ever be the dimming of another. We dwell
in a vale of seesaws--and cobwebs spin fastest upon laurel. Verman, the
tattooed wild boy, speaking only in his native foreign languages, Verman
the gay, Verman the caperer, capered no more; he chuckled no more, he
beckoned no more, nor tapped his chest, nor wreathed his idolatrous face
in smiles. Gone, all gone, were his little artifices for attracting the
general attention to himself; gone was every engaging mannerism which
had endeared him to the mercurial public. He squatted against the wall
and glowered at the new sensation. It was the old story--the old,
old story of too much temperament: Verman was suffering from artistic
jealousy.

The second audience contained a cash-paying adult, a spectacled young
man whose poignant attention was very flattering. He remained after the
lecture, and put a few questions to Roddy, which were answered rather
confusedly upon promptings from Penrod. The young man went away without
having stated the object of his interrogations, but it became quite
plain, later in the day. This same object caused the spectacled young
man to make several brief but stimulating calls directly after leaving
the Schofield and Williams Big Show, and the consequences thereof
loitered not by the wayside.

The Big Show was at high tide. Not only was the auditorium filled
and throbbing; there was an indubitable line--by no means wholly
juvenile--waiting for admission to the next pufformance. A group stood
in the street examining the poster earnestly as it glowed in the long,
slanting rays of the westward sun, and people in automobiles and other
vehicles had halted wheel in the street to read the message so piquantly
given to the world. These were the conditions when a crested victoria
arrived at a gallop, and a large, chastely magnificent and highly
flushed woman descended, and progressed across the yard with an air of
violence.

At sight of her, the adults of the waiting line hastily disappeared,
and most of the pausing vehicles moved instantly on their way. She was
followed by a stricken man in livery.

The stairs to the auditorium were narrow