“The first act!” cried Ben Hall, “will be some fancy riding on a horse, by Ted Kennedy!  Come on, Ted!” he called.

“Oh, Ben’s dressed up like a real clown!” called Bunny to Sue, as they looked out between their blanket curtains, and saw what was going on.  Ben had made himself a clown suit out of some calico.  With a pointed cap on his head, and his face all streaked with red and white chalk, he looked just like a real clown in a real circus.  Ben and some of the others had “dressed up,” while the people were taking their seats in the big tent.

“Oh, look, Bunny!” cried Sue.  “It’s a real horse Ted is riding!”

And so it was.  When Ben called for the first act, in came Ted riding on the back of one of his father’s farm horses.  Ted wore an old bathing suit, on which he had sewed some pieces of colored rags, and some small sleigh bells, that jingled when he danced about on the back of the horse.  For the horse was such a slow one, with such a broad back, that there was no danger of Ted’s falling off.

Around and around the sawdust ring rode Ted.  Now he would stand on his hands, and again on his feet.  Then he would sit down and ride backwards.  Finally, when the horse was going a little faster Ted jumped off, jumped on again, and then turned a somersault in the air.

[Illustration:  OUT CAME BUNNY, THE SCARECROW BOY, AND SUE, THE JACK-O’-LANTERN GIRL. Page 224.

Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus.]

“Wasn’t that great, Bunny?” cried Sue, who was watching.

“It sure was.  But hurry up, or we’ll be late.”

The people clapped and laughed as Ted rode out of the ring after his act.  Then came more of the circus tricks.  Two of the bigger boys pretended they were an elephant.  One was the hind legs and tail and the other boy was the front legs and trunk.  The boys were covered with a suit of dark cloth, almost the color of an elephant, and when they walked around the ring it was very funny.  Then a little boy was given a ride on the “elephant’s back.”  He liked it very much.

Two other boys pretended they were horses, with long bunches of grass for tails.  Each one took a smaller boy on his back, and then these “boy horses” raced around the sawdust ring.

Two of the girls were dressed up like real circus ladies, one in a pink, and the other in a blue dress, made from mosquito netting.  They sat on sawhorses, which Bunker Blue got from the village carpenter shop.  And though the sawhorses could not run, or gallop, or even trot, the girls pretended they could, and they had such a funny make-believe race that everyone laughed.  The girls even jumped through paper hoops, just as the real riders do in a circus.

Then there was a wheelbarrow race between two boys, each of whom had to push another boy around the tent.  All went well until one of the clowns put a pail of water in front of one of the wheelbarrows.  Over this pail the boy stumbled, and he and the one he was wheeling got all wet.