But just after the dancing horses had left the tent and the clowns swarmed in again, Jerry saw one of them stop and look up at the boys above him.  He had a bulldog under his arm.

Jerry, unmindful of those about him, stood up and shouted: 

“Whiteface!  Here I am!”

The clown turned to him, made that funny clicking noise in his mouth and bowed.

“Jerry Elbow,” said the clown and clapped his hands.

“It’s Jerry!” exclaimed Danny’s startled voice somewhere among the hundreds of boys and grown-ups back of Jerry.  Then Danny added in an awed voice, “The clown spoke to him!”

Jerry suddenly sat down, for all eyes were directed towards him.  He didn’t look around for Danny and Chris, for he was too confused to face all those pairs of eyes.

Four or five of the other clowns gathered about Whiteface, looked up at Jerry and clapped their hands, too.  Jerry shut his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them Whiteface and the other clowns were all doing something there right in front of him.

Whiteface was placing his bulldog down on the ground and Jerry kept fascinated eyes on him.  He never could tell afterwards what the other clowns did then except that as they left to go to another part of the circus, one of them, who wore the biggest and longest and flattest shoes Jerry had ever seen, stepped on his own foot and couldn’t get off!  Another clown had to help him off his own foot!

But everything that Whiteface did Jerry saw and remembered, for he knew that Whiteface was playing just for him alone.  The bulldog stood perfectly still until Whiteface held out a stick; then the clown jerked upon the strap which he held in his right hand, one end of which was fastened to the dog’s collar, and the dog jumped right over the stick!

Next time Whiteface raised the stick much higher, but when he signaled to the dog by jerking on his collar that it was time for him to jump, the dog jumped over the stick again.

Jerry heard the crowd laughing and applauding.  He thought no one could help laughing at the ludicrous expression on the clown’s face as he looked up at the spectators every time the dog jumped the stick.  Jerry did not awake to the fact that the bulldog was a stuffed toy one, and not a real dog, until the clown took it by the tail and struck another clown on the back with it.

The gasp of astonishment that came from many small throats told Jerry that others had thought it a real dog, too.  He joined in the laughter at the easy manner in which the clown had fooled them.  The look that Whiteface turned on Jerry sent a warm glow surging over his body.  He liked Whiteface and was happy in the knowledge that Whiteface liked him.

He watched the clown fasten the life-size toy bulldog to the back of his costume.  How he did it, Jerry could not tell, but the mock terror depicted on Whiteface’s features when he found the bulldog with what seemed to be a death-grip on the seat of his clothes caused Jerry and the rest of the children to shriek with laughter.  With that look of mock terror on his face, the clown started to run to get away from the dog, and he ran and cavorted and leaped so ludicrously that many eyes besides Jerry’s followed him all the way around the arena until he disappeared through the entrance.