s a very pretty trick.

With the air of a real master, Bert snapped his whip and placed on the
table a little piece of board. He rubbed something on each end (it was
a bit of dried herring, but the people didn't know that), then Harry
put Snoop on one end and Fluffy on the other.

"Oh, a teeter-tauter!" called Freddie, unable to restrain his joy any
longer. "I bet on Snoop. He's the heaviest."

At the sound of Freddie's voice Snoop turned around and the move sent
Fluffy up the air.

"Oh! oh! oh!" came a chorus from the children, but before anybody in
the circus had time to interfere off went Fluffy, as hard as she could
run, over the lots, home.

The next minute Snoop was after her, and Harry stood alone in the ring
bowing to the "tremendous applause."

When the laughing had ceased Bert made the next announcement.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "we will now introduce our famous
menagerie. First we have the singing mice."

"They're mine!" called Freddie, but Nan insisted on him keeping quiet.

"Now you will hear the mice sing," said Bert, and as he held up the
cage of little mice somebody whistled a funny tune back of the scenes.

"Good! good!" called Mr. Bobbsey. "We've got real talent here," he
added, for indeed the boys had put together a fine show.

"Now you see our aquarium," went on Bert as Harry helped him bring
forward the table that held the glass tank.

"Here we have a real sea serpent," he said, pointing to a good fat chub
that flopped around in the water.

"Let the little ones walk right up and see them," Bert said. "Form in
line and pass in this way."

Not only the children went up, but grown folks too, for they wanted a
look into the tank.

"Now here are our alligators and crocodiles," announced Bert, pointing
his whip at the turtles.

"And these are sea-lions," he said, pointing out Freddie's hop-toads.

At each announcement everybody laughed, but Bert went on as seriously
as if he were deaf.

"In this separate tank," he declared, "we have our boa-constrictors,
the largest and fiercest in the world. This is the first time one of
this specimen has ever been captured alive. Note the dangerous stripe
on his back!"

It was Jack's snakes that came in for this description, and the girls
were quite afraid of them, although they were in a glass jar.

"Well, I declare!" said Mrs. Burns. "If this isn't a sure-enough
circus. I often paid a half-dollar when I went to see things no better
t