sagging a little at the
knees, were sky-blue, and their tunics green and slashed with yellow.
They wore jaunty velvet caps and fascinating daggers, ready to hand. As
they reached the entrance to the tent they halted, and with some uneasy
shuffling formed up on either side, making a splendid passage of fire for
the ten Moorish horsemen who rode next, fierce fellows these, armed to the
teeth, with black, shining faces and rolling eyes. A band struck up
inside the tent to welcome them, and they rode through, scarcely bending
their proud heads--much to the relief of the more timorous members of the
crowd who had eyed the rear end of their noble steeds with a natural
anxiety. Unfortunately the torches smoked a good deal, and there was some
grumbling.

"'Ere, take the stinking thing out of me eyes, can't yer?"

"Right down dangerous, I calls it. If one of them there sparks gets into
me 'at I'll be all ablaze in half a jiffy. And oo'll pay for the
feathers, I'd like to know?"

"Oh, shut up--shut up!" Robert whispered bitterly. "Why can't everyone
shut up?"

"The Biggest and Best Show in Europe," Rufus was reading aloud in a
squeaky treble; "un-pre-ce-dented spectacles--performing sea-lions--great
chariot-race--the Legless Wonder from Iceland--Warogha, the Missing
Link--the greatest living Lady Equestrian, Madame Gloria Marotti,
Mad-rad--oh, I can't read that--Gyp Labelle, the darling of the Folies
Bergeres--what's Folies Bergeres, Robert----? Oh, my word--my word!"

It was the Shetland ponies that had saved Robert the trouble of replying
that he didn't know. After the ferocious magnificence of the Moorish
gentlemen, they came as a sort of comic relief. Everyone laughed, and
even the lady with the feather hat recovered her good temper.

"Why, you could keep one of them in the back yard--not an inch bigger than
our collie, is he, 'Enry? And Jim's not full grown--not by 'alf."

"As though anyone cared about her beastly collie!" Robert thought.

The elephants, a small one and a big one together to show their absurd
proportions, came next. The earth shook under them. They waved their
trunks hopefully from side to side, and their little brown eyes, which
seemed to have no relation to their bodies, peered out like prisoners out
of the peep-holes of a monstrous moving prison. When the man next to
Robert offered the smallest of them an empty paper-bag it curled its trunk
over his head and opened its pointed mouth