“It’s my turn now!” Chris called, after Danny had jumped for the twelfth time.  “Come on, Celia Jane.”

They dropped the fence and, as there was nothing for the green elephant to jump unless he could clear the tight rope, two feet from the ground, Danny perforce gave way to the dancing pony and the clown.

Chris was trying to crack an old whip which he and Danny had made by braiding three strands of leather, with a “cracker” at the end, and Celia Jane was dancing gracefully about the ring, her tail switching and her mane blowing, when the unexpected voice of Darn Darner from the alley brought the circus to a sudden halt.

“Hullo!  What do you kids think you’re doin’?” he asked, in the gruff voice which he adopted when he wanted to be particularly disagreeable.

Jerry squirmed around on the barrel until he could see Darn.  “We’re playin’ circus,” he answered with a feeble, placating smile, before the others had recovered from their surprise.

“Yah!  You call that a circus?  Chris can’t even crack the whip.”

“I can, too, sometimes,” Chris disputed.

“I’ll show you how to do it,” Darn offered, clambering over the fence.  “Here, give me the whip!”

He took it out of Chris’s surprised and reluctant fingers and began circling it over his head and giving it a sudden jerk.  It didn’t crack at first, but soon he got the knack of it and cracked it loudly as close to Celia Jane’s ears and ankles as he could come without touching her.

“Giddap!” he commanded the dancing pony.  “Show your paces.”  That time he tried to crack the whip too near Celia Jane and the end of the lash wound around her leg.

“Oh!  Oh!” cried the dancing pony, hopping about on one leg.  “That hurt!  It ain’t no fair makin’ it crack so close an’ I won’t play no more.”  Half crying from the pain, Celia Jane ran to the house, followed by Nora.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Darn called to Celia Jane.  “The whip must be a little too long, or I wouldn’t have sized up the distance wrong.”  He turned to Danny.  “What do you think you are?”

“I’m a el’funt,” said Danny proudly, “an’ I jump the fence like the circus el’funt.”

“An el’funt!” cried Darn, turning his eyes up to the sky.  “And he calls that an’ el’funt!”

“It is a el’funt,” protested Jerry.

Darn Darner laughed derisively.

“You can ’maginary it’s a el’funt,” Chris explained.

“It would take some imagination,” was Darn’s only comment on that.

“What’s wrong with it?” asked Danny.  “I bet you couldn’t do any better.”

“What’s wrong with it!” exclaimed Darn.  “Ask me what’s right with it. 
Everything’s wrong with it.”

“It looks like the picture of the el’funt—­almost,” defended Jerry.

“It looks as much like that as I do like a giraffe.”

Danny turned his back on Darn and the latter exclaimed: