If you’ve been to a circus yourself, you know something of the sights they saw and of the sounds they heard.  If you haven’t better get your grandfather (or your father, if your grandfather isn’t handy) to take you to see one, for all the interesting things Mary Jane and John heard and saw couldn’t be put into one chapter—­not even if it was a double long one!  They saw curious animals, munching away at their dinner as though they had lived right there in that spot all their lives instead of seven hours.  They saw crawling snakes and marvelous birds and the elephants that swayed their trunks backward and forward, backward and forward, as though they were doing morning exercises.  And the ponies!  The prettiest little ponies!  Mary Jane didn’t know there were such pretty ponies in all the world.  She liked them the best of anything she saw.  John liked the monkeys, and Mary Jane and he fed them peanuts that Grandfather bought and they felt so very important because the keeper said that the sign, “Don’t feed these animals,” needn’t bother them!

Then they went into the big tent and found their seats—­just in time they were too, for the clowns came running in at that very minute and kept the children, and the grown folks, too, in an uproar of laughter.  After the circus really began, it seemed to Mary Jane that she must be in a dream.  It didn’t seem as though all those jumping, racing, men and horses and elephants and all, could be real!  She had to pinch herself hard to be sure she was awake.

Right in the middle a man came around with ice cream cones and John bought one.

“May I buy one too, Grandfather?” asked Mary Jane.

“Just as you like,” said Grandfather.  “It’s your money.”  And for the first time she remembered the purse with the two nickels that she had all the time held tightly clutched in her hand!  She bought the cone and ate it as she watched the circus—­calmly indifferent to the fact that it was leaking onto her pretty pink dress.  You simply can’t notice everything at a circus!

Finally the great show was over.  The last of the Cinderella parade slipped behind the curtains and folks began to hurry home.  Grandfather took hold of each child and together they climbed over the seats till they reached the safe ground.

“Shall we look at the animals again?” he asked.

“We might try,” said Mary Jane doubtfully, “but my looking don’t see!”

“Poor child,” said Grandfather as he suddenly realized how tired the little girl must be.  “I expect your ‘lookers’ are tired enough to go home.”  He picked her up and set her on his shoulder and then, grasping John’s hand firmly, he made his way out of the crowd.

“But I can’t go home yet!” exclaimed John, when he saw they were leaving the grounds.  “I haven’t spent all my money!”

“Well, we can’t go home with any money left, that’s a sure thing!” laughed Grandfather.  “What do you want to get?”