“I will,” promised Jerry.

“Shut your eyes.  Are they shut?”

“Yes,” said Jerry, closing them so tight that he saw funny little green and red and purple streaks of light.

“Keep them shut.  Don’t open them once till I tap you on the back twice.  Then you count to twenty, and if I don’t tap you on the back again, open your eyes and you will be in the circus.  Then you walk right ahead till you come to the first row of seats where there will be a lot of children and you just pick out any empty seat you see and sit there.  Do you understand?”

“Yes,” replied Jerry.

“Eyes shut,” commanded the clown.  “Come with me.”

He led Jerry quite a distance away from the tent, Jerry thought, and then had him sit down on the ground so that the clown was directly behind him.

“Now,” said Whiteface, “you are going to be carried into the circus, but don’t open your eyes till I tap twice on your back and you have counted to twenty.”

“I won’t,” promised Jerry.

“If you see me in the circus,” said the clown, “you can speak to me if you want to.  No, don’t open your eyes.”

For Jerry, in his eagerness to assure Whiteface that he would speak to him if he saw him in the circus, was about to look up at him.  For fear that he yet might do so, he shut his eyes tighter, till they hurt, and covered them with both hands.

“Lean over,” whispered the clown, “close to the ground.”

As he did so, Jerry felt his forehead brush something that felt exactly like the canvas of a tent.

“Now,” said the clown, “good-by till you speak to me in the circus.”

“Good-by,” whispered Jerry in a daze of delight and mystery.

He heard a swishing sound and then felt the clown push him along on the ground.  A moment later he felt two thumps on his back and he started in to count.  He reached twenty without feeling another thump and opened his eyes.

He was in the circus tent!

CHAPTER X

“GREAT SULT ANNA O’QUEEN”

Jerry knew that he was in the circus tent although he had not expected it to be anything like that.  A band was playing and hundreds and hundreds of persons, mostly children, were sitting on boards, each one raised a little higher than the others, and whistling and clapping their hands.  And clear around the tent were other sections of seats, all filled with men and women and children.  Eyes wide open with wonder at the smell and the bigness of the tent and the paraphernalia used by the performers, Jerry rose to his feet.  He looked back of him, but only the canvas side of the tent met his gaze.  Whiteface, the clown, had entirely disappeared!

The lively air the band was playing seemed to get right inside of Jerry, for his heart began to pound fast and his eyes were dancing.

He was going to see the circus!  The clown had got him in without a ticket!  He saw many boys and girls and older persons, too, hurrying to find places on the board seats and he joined the throng.  He remembered that Whiteface had told him to take any seat there he could find and he sat down in one in the second row between a boy a good deal older than himself and a man with a black mustache.