“I won’t be a trained seal, so I won’t,” said Jerry, at last catching up with the parade.  “The balloon won’t stay on my nose and my neck hurts and I’ve cut my hand on a piece of glass or a splinter or something till it bleeds.”  He held up one hand with a little trickle of blood on it.  “I want to be something else.  I won’t play if I’ve got to be a trained seal any more.”

“All right,” Danny acquiesced, after a moment’s thought, “you can be the audience.  We need an audience to clap their hands and holler so’s we’ll know the crowd likes us and we’re doin’ all right.  This circus can get along without no trained seal.”

“I don’t want to be the audience,” replied Jerry dismally, seeing that, as the audience, he would have nothing to do with the circus.

Nora now put in a word.  “Let’s count out,” she said, “and the one who’s counted out will be the audience.”

“I guess not,” replied Danny emphatically, but after Celia Jane had whispered something in his ear, he considered a moment, looked at Jerry and then whispered something to Nora.

Nora looked at Jerry and counted on her fingers rapidly.  Then she counted on her fingers again, after a quick glance at Danny.  She nodded to Danny, who said: 

“All right, whoever’s counted out will be the audience.  You count out, Nora.”  Starting with Danny and pointing to a child in rotation with each word, Nora chanted and counted: 

    “’One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. 
      All good children go to heaven. 
      O-u-t spells out.’”

Her finger was pointing at Jerry.

“Jerry’s out!” cried Celia Jane, skipping about.  “He’s the audience!”

“I won’t be no audience,” said Jerry.

“You’ll have to be,” asserted Danny, “you was counted out.”

“I won’t be!  I won’t play!” cried Jerry.  He threw down his carpet-rag balloon, took off the gunny-sack apron, tossed it on top of the balloon and ran to the house.

“Cry baby!” shouted Danny after him, but Jerry did not even wait to refute that charge, for he knew he was in danger of proving it if he remained out there a moment longer.

Jerry felt the hot tears start to come as the screen door slammed after him.  He dashed them angrily out of his eyes and ran up the stairs to the room he shared with Danny and Chris. If Mother ’Larkey had been at home and not away sewing for Mrs. Moran, he would have gone to her in his bitter disappointment, sure of finding comfort in her arms as he had so many times.

It was not fair for Danny to take the part of the elephant away from him and not even let him play it for a teeny little while, as he had promised he would.  For two cents he would run away as he had from the man with the—­the scarred face.  He looked quickly around, half-fearful, as always, that that man might have learned where he was and be lurking around the corner ready to pounce upon him.  The room was empty and he took a long breath.  He would run away if it weren’t for Mother ’Larkey and for little Kathleen who always cried when he even said anything about running away.  He heard the screen door slam shut after a time and Nora’s gentle footsteps coming up the stairway.  He turned his back to the door.