Andy threw himself flat on the green sward.  He closed his eyes and gave himself up to a rapture of thought.

Gay banners, brightly comparisoned horses, white wildernesses of circus tents, tinselled clowns, royal ringmasters, joyful strains of music floated through his active brain.  It was a day dream of rare beauty, and he could not tear himself away from it.

An idle hour went by before Andy realized it.  As echoing voices rang out on the quiet air, he got to his feet rubbing his eyes as if they were dazzled.

“Recess already,” Andy said.  “Well, I’ll lay low until it’s over.  I don’t want to meet the boys just now.  Then I’ll do some more thinking.  I suppose I’ve got to decide to go home.  Ugh! but I hate to—­and I just won’t until the very last moment.”

Andy went in among the shrubbery farther away from the road, but he could not hide himself.  An active urchin discovered him from a distance.  He yelled out riotously to his comrades, and they all came trooping along pell-mell in Andy’s direction.

Their expelled schoolmate and favorite greeted them with a genial smile, never showing the white feather in the least.

His chums found him carelessly tossing half-a-dozen crab apples from hand to hand.  Andy was an adept in “the glass ball act.”  He described rapid semicircles, festoons and double crosses.  He shot the green objects up into the air in all directions, and went through the performance without a break.

“Isn’t Andy a crackerjack?” gloated enthusiastic little Tod Smith.  “Oh, say, Andy, you won’t disappoint us now, will you?”

“What about?” inquired Andy.

“The rest of it.”

“The rest of what?”

“Your show.  You know you promised—­”

“Oh, that’s all off!” declared Andy gloomily.  “I’ve made trouble enough already with my circus antics, I’m thinking.”

“Don’t you be mean now, Andy Wildwood!” broke in Ned Wilfer, a particular friend of the expelled boy.  “Old Darrow has given us a double recess.  We have a good forty minutes to have fun in.  Come on.”

The speaker seized Andy’s reluctant arm and began pulling him towards the road.

“Got the horse?” he asked of a companion.

“Sure,” eagerly nodded the lad addressed.  “I got him fixed up, platform, blanket and all, before school.  He’s tied up, waiting, at the end of father’s ten-acre lot.”

“Yes, and I’ve got the hoop all ready there, too,” chimed in Alf Warren, another schoolboy.

“See here, fellows,” demurred Andy dubiously, “I haven’t much heart for frolic.  I’m expelled, you know, and there’s Aunt Lavinia—­”

“Forget it!” interrupted Ned.  “That will all right itself.”

Andy consented to accompany the gleeful, expectant throng.  They had arranged the night before to hold an amateur circus exhibition “on their own hook.”

One boy had agreed to provide the “fiery steed” for the occasion.  Alf Warren was to be property man, and donate the blazing hoop.