“Here’s your grand circus,” whispered Sam.  “Beats the Greatest Show on Earth to bits, doesn’t it?”

“I’ll wager a big tomato against a peck of clams that I can get up a better show myself, and do it blindfolded, too,” returned Tom.

The grand opening at an end, there was a bit of juggling by a juggler who made several bad breaks in his act, and then came the lady bareback rider.  At the same time, Frozzler came out, dressed in a clown’s suit and painted up.

“Hullo, there’s that chap again!” cried Dick.  “He must be running half the show himself.”

“How are you to-morrow?” sang out the clown.  And after doing a flip-flap, he continued:  “Mr. Ringmaster, what’s the difference between your knife and me?”

“I know!” shouted Tom.  “His knife is a jack-knife, while you are a jack-of-all-trades!”

At this sally there was a loud laugh.

“What is the difference between my knife and you?” queried the ringmaster, as soon as he could make himself heard.

“That’s it.”

“I don’t know.”

“I told you!” shouted Tom.

“The difference between your knife and me,” answered Frozzler, “is that you can shut your knife up but you can’t shut me up,” and then he made a face and did another tumble.

“His knife is sharper than you, too,” cried Sam.  A roar followed, which made Frozzler so angry he shook his fist at the youngest Rover.

“Why is that boy like a fish?” cried Frozzler.

“Because he’s too slippery for a clown to catch,” put in Fred, loudly, and this created such a laugh that Frozzler’s answer was completely lost on the crowd.  Again he shook his fist at our friends, but they merely laughed at him.

“I had a funny dream last night,” went on the clown.  “What do you think I dreamed?”

“That you had paid all your bills,” called out Dick.

This brought forth another laugh at Frozzler’s expense, in which even some of the circus hands joined.

“Say, those boys are sharp,” said the clown who had been discharged.  “I shouldn’t care to run up against them.”

“Three of them are the Rover boys,” answered a man sitting near.  “Nobody can get the best of them.”

“I dreamed a whale came along and swallowed me,” went on Frozzler.

“Hullo, I knew you were a Jonah!” sang out Tom.  And once more the crowd roared.

“In the whale I met my old schoolmate, Billy Black,” continued the clown.

“That was a black moment for poor Billy,” was Sam’s comment.

“Did you give Billy a whaling?” asked Tom.

“Did dat whale git a stummick ache from swallerin’ yo’?” came loudly from Aleck.  “I t’ink any whale would, ’less his insides was copper-lined.”

Aleck said this so gravely that it brought forth a roar which did not subside for a full minute.  Poor Frozzler could do nothing, and to save himself made half a dozen tumbles.  Then he started to run from the ring, but tripped over one of the ropes and pitched headlong on his nose.