ion sumpum 's up, and nose around till he.... Aw, they ain't
no use tellin' you anything.... Well. Put your head over so 's I can
whisper. Sure I am.... Well, I could learn, couldn't I? Now don't you
tell a living soul, will you? If anybody asts you, you tell 'em you
don't know anything at all about it. Say, why 'n't you come along? I
promised you the last time. That's jist your mother callin' you. Let on
you don't hear her. Aw, stay. Aw, you don't either have to go. Say. Less
you and me get up early, and go see the circus come in town, will you? I
will, if you will. All right. Remember now. Don't you tell anybody what
I told you. You know."

If a fellow just only could run off with a circus! Wouldn't it be great?
No more splitting kindling and carrying in coal; no more: "Hurry up,
now, or you'll be late for school;" no more poking along in a humdrum
existence, never going any place or seeing anything, but the glad,
free, untrammeled life, the life of a circus-boy, standing up on top of
somebody's head (you could pretend he was your daddy. Who'd ever know
the difference?) and your leg stuck up like five minutes to six, and him
standing on top of a horse--and the horse going around the ring, and the
ring master cracking his whip--aw, say! How about it?

Maybe the show-people would take you even if you didn't have two joints
to common folks' one, and hadn't had early advantages in the way of
plenty of snakes to try the grease out of. And then... and then....
Travel all around, and be in a new town every day! And see things! The
water-works, and Main Street, and the Soldiers' Monument, and the Second
Presbyterian Church. All the sights there are to see in strange places.
And then when the show came back to your own home-town next year, people
would wonder whose was that slim and gracile figure in the green silk
tights and spangled breech-clout that capered so nimbly on the bounding
courser's back, that switched the natty switch and shrilly called out:
"Hep! Hep!" They'd screw up their eyes to look hard, and they'd say:
"Yes, sir. It is. It's him. It's Willie Bigelow. Well, of all things!"
And they'd clap their hands, and be so proud of you. And they'd wonder
how it was that they could have been so blind to your many merits when
they had you with them. They'd feel sorry that they ever said you were
a "regular little imp," if ever there was one, and that you had the Old
Boy in you as big as a horse. They'd feel ashamed of