clown, who handed Bud a dollar,
remarking in a low voice, "Well, son, you're a daisy. They generally
drop the first kick."

[Illustration]

[Illustration: "_Well, son, you're a daisy. They generally drop the
first kick_."]

What passed in the ring as Bud left it, bedraggled and dusty, did not
interest him. He brushed himself as he went. The band was playing
madly, and the young woman in the stiff skirts was standing by her
horse ready to mount. The crowd did not stop laughing; Bud inclined
his head to dust his knickerbockers, and then in a tragic instant he
saw what was convulsing the multitude with laughter. The outer seam of
the right leg of his velveteen breeches was gone, and a brown leg was
winking in and out from the flapping garment as he walked. Wildly he
gathered the parted garment, and it seemed to him that he never would
cover the ground between the ring and the benches. In the course of
several aeons--which the other boys measured by fleeting minutes--the
wave of shame that covered Bud subsided. Pins bound up the wounds in
his clothes. He drew a natural breath, and was able to join the mob
which howled down the man who announced the concert.

After that the inexorable minutes flew by until the performance ended.
In the menagerie tent Bud and his friends looked thirstily upon the
cool, pink "schooners" of lemonade, and finally, when they had spent
a few blissful moments with the monkeys and had enjoyed a last, long,
lingering look at the elephants, they dragged themselves unwillingly
away into the commonplace of sunshine and trees and blue sky. Only the
romantic touch of the side-show banners and the wonder of the gilded
wagons assured them that their memories of the passing hour were not
empty dreams.

The boys were standing enraptured before the picture of the fat woman
upon the swaying canvas. Bud had drifted away from them to glut his
eyes upon the picture of the snakes writhing around the charmer. The
North-enders had been following Bud at a respectful distance, waiting
for the opportunity which his separation from his clan gave to them.
They were enforced by a country boy of great reputed prowess in
battle. Bud did not know his danger until they pounced upon him. In an
instant the fight was raging. Over the guy ropes it went, under the
ticket wagon, into the thick of the lemonade stands. And when Piggy
and Abe and Jimmy had joined it, they trailed the track of the storm
by torn hats, bruised, bat