“Yes,” said her husband.  “The circus is out and we will have time before the evening performance.”

“Mother ’Larkey will be awful glad to see the circus,” Jerry remarked.  “She ain’t seen none since just after she was married.  An’ so will Nora and Celia Jane.”

CHAPTER XII

THE DIZZY SEAT OF GLORY

“You boys wait here while Helen and I get ready,” said Whiteface, “and then we’ll pay our respects to Mrs. Mullarkey and Nora and Celia Jane and Kathleen.”

“You won’t go out of the tent, will you, Gary?” asked the elephant-lady.

“No’m,” Jerry promised, and then at the look of disappointment and longing on her face, cried, “No, Mother!” He ran and gave her a good-by hug.  “I’ll wait right here.”

When Jerry and Danny and Chris were left alone, there was an abashed silence at first, broken after a minute by Chris’ remarking: 

“Gee, ain’t it excitin’, Jerry!  Findin’ your father and mother an’ being lifted up in a el’funt’s trunk an’ your father a clown in the circus and all?”

“Yes,” smiled Jerry with satisfaction.  “He’s the greatest clown ever lived.”

“I guess that’s so,” Danny stated judicially and also apologetically, for he wished to make up with Jerry for getting his circus ticket away from him.

“It is so!” cried Jerry emphatically.

“That’s what I meant, Jerry—­I mean, Gary.”  A silence fell and then Danny continued:  “I wish I’d never of asked Celia Jane to cry and get your ticket away from you.”

Jerry said nothing, as he remembered how Danny had tricked him, and Danny, after shifting about uneasily, added as though in justification of his action: 

“If I hadn’t of, you’d probably never of met your father.  He couldn’t of spoken to you if he hadn’t seen you before you got into the circus.”

That impressed Jerry as a point of view that might be true and somehow he didn’t feel angry at Danny and Celia Jane any more.  He was too happy at having a clown for his father to hold resentment.

“Mebbe not,” was all he said, but Danny took those words as meaning that Jerry wasn’t going to stay mad.

“How’d you get in?” he asked eagerly.

“Whiteface thought of a way that didn’t cost any money,” replied Jerry.

“What kind of a way was that?” Danny was all eagerness for information of that sort.

“I don’t know,” said Jerry.  “He thought of something an’ told me to keep my eyes shut an’ I didn’t see what he done.”

“Didn’t you open ’em jest once?” demanded Danny.  “I would of and then mebbe we could of got into other circuses that way.”

“It might of mixed our thoughts, like when I said something when he told me not to,” Jerry observed.

“What d’you mean, mixin’ your thoughts?”

Jerry was saved by the entrance of Mr. Burrows from trying to explain just what he did mean by that, for he hadn’t understood very well himself.  The circus man was smiling all over as he approached Jerry and seemed just as pleased that Jerry had found his parents as Jerry was himself.