get out!" cried Eda, drawing Janet away.

"I wouldn't let him hurt you, dearie," the young man assured her.

"You!" she retorted contemptuously, but grinned in spite of herself,
showing her gums.

The vague feeling of terror inspired by this tent was a part of its
fascination, for it seemed pregnant with potential tragedies suggested
by the juxtaposition of helpless babies and wild beasts, the
babies crying or staring in blank amazement at padding tigers whose
phosphorescent eyes never left these morsels beyond the bars. The
two girls wandered about, their arms closely locked, but the strange
atmosphere, the roars of the beasts, the ineffable, pungent odour of the
circus, of sawdust mingled with the effluvia of animals, had aroused
an excitement that was slow in subsiding. Some time elapsed before they
were capable of taking a normal interest in the various exhibits.

"'Adjutant Bird,'" Janet read presently from a legend on one of the
compartments of a cage devoted to birds, and surveying the somewhat
dissolute occupant. "Why, he's just like one of those tall mashers
who stay at the Wilmot and stand on the sidewalk,--travelling men, you
know."

"Say-isn't he?" Eda agreed. "Isn't he pleased with himself, and his feet
crossed!"

"And see this one, Eda--he's a 'Harpy Eagle.' There's somebody we know
looks just like that. Wait a minute--I'll tell you--it's the woman who
sits in the cashier's cage at Grady's."

"If it sure isn't!" said Eda.

"She has the same fluffy, light hair--hairpins can't keep it down, and
she looks at you in that same sort of surprised way with her head on one
side when you hand in your check."

"Why, it's true to the life!" cried Eda enthusiastically. "She thinks
she's got all the men cinched,--she does and she's forty if she's a
day."

These comparisons brought them to a pitch of risible enjoyment amply
sustained by the spectacle in the monkey cage, to which presently they
turned. A chimpanzee, with a solicitation more than human, was solemnly
searching a friend for fleas in the midst of a pandemonium of chattering
and screeching and chasing, of rattling of bars and trapezes carried on
by their companions.

"Well, young ladies," said a voice, "come to pay a call on your
relations--have ye?"

Eda giggled hysterically. An elderly man was standing beside them. He
was shabbily dressed, his own features were wizened, almost simian, and
by his friendly and fatuous smile Janet recognized one