“Ole Danny dumb-head!  Blue-eyed beauty!  Ole Danny dumb-head!  Blue-eyed beauty!” chanted Darn, thrusting his face between two palings of the fence and sticking out his tongue.

Then Danny picked up a board and, flanked by Chris, advanced to the fence, whereat Darn took to his heels, shouting, “Blue-eyed beauty!  Ole Danny dumb-head!” as loud as he could.

At the end of the alley he turned and shouted,

“A pants’ leg for an el’funt’s tail!  Oh, my gorry!”

When he disappeared from sight, the three boys surveyed the elephant’s skin lying on the ground.

“Let’s not play any more,” said Danny.

“I’m tired of the ole circus, anyway,” replied Chris.

They went into the house, Jerry slowly following them.  Even he could not ’maginary the old green wrapper and the stuffed brown coat sleeve and blue trouser leg into an elephant any more.

CHAPTER VI

THE CHILDREN THAT CRIED IN THE LANE

The days slipped by and none of the children played circus again.  Jerry thought of it often and would have liked to be the elephant just once, but he never said anything.  That made him dream all the more about the real circus which was coming and wish that he could see it.  He was very careful not to put his longing into words, so he wouldn’t remind Mother ’Larkey of the ends that wouldn’t meet and make her feel badly.  One day she came across the old green wrapper elephant skin in the woodshed.

“Why don’t you children play circus any more?” she asked Danny.

“El’funts don’t look like that,” he asserted, pointing disdainfully at the discarded costume.  “Their tails are small like a rope.”

“Are they now?” she asked.  “And how might you be after knowing that?”

“National history says so,” Danny replied in a very decisive tone.

Mrs. Mullarkey gave one of those low, fleeting laughs that always made Jerry feel so good inside and which had become so rare of late.  “Yes, I guess national history would be after telling about the elephant’s tail as long as it deals with elephants and eagles and donkeys and camels and all.”

Jerry felt there must be something funny in what Mother ’Larkey said, because her nose went all crinkly, and he smiled in sympathy anyway, although he didn’t understand.

But playing circus no longer appealed to the Mullarkey children.  Darn Darner had had a blighting influence on the power of their imaginations, and Danny in the elephant costume would have been to them now only a little boy in an old green wrapper much too large for him, dragging about a stuffed blue trouser leg for a tail,—­a very ridiculous spectacle.  Jerry realized that there would never be a next time and that he would never play the elephant.

A few days before the circus was to come to town Jerry and the Mullarkey children were returning from the woods by the creek, where they had gone to see what the prospects were for a good yield of hazel and hickory nuts in the fall, and had just entered the edge of town when they saw Darn Darner approaching.  They had not set eyes on him since the day he broke up their circus and they were doubtful as to how he would behave towards them.