This traveling medicine show which Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue saw was like those.  And, just as the Browns reached the place in the village square where the torch on the wagon was burning, the man had finished selling a large number of bottles of medicine.  It was about time he amused the crowd again, he thought.  So he called in a loud voice: 

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, while I am getting out of my storeroom some more bottles of my wonderful medicine that will cure all your pains and aches, I will have my friend here, Professor Rombodno Prosondo entertain you on his magical banjo.  Professor Rombodno Prosondo, I might say, is the most wonderful player on the banjo you have ever heard.  He has traveled all over the world and played in every country.  Professor, you will now oblige!”

Of course what the medicine man said about the banjo player was only a joke, and the people knew that.  He was not a professor at all.  But he was a good banjo player and a singer, and Bunny and Sue were delighted with the music.  The songs, too, were funny.

“He sings like a real colored boy,” said Sue.

“Maybe he is,” her father observed.

“Yes, and maybe he’s only blacked up, like most of them,” suggested Mrs. Brown.  “Can you tell if he looks anything like Fred Ward, Daddy?”

“No, I can’t be sure that he does,” said Mr. Brown.  “I never saw much of the missing boy, you know; and I certainly would not know him if he were blackened like a negro.  This one, if he is not really colored, is well made-up.  He would fool almost any one.”

“Is there any way we could find out?” asked Mrs. Brown.  “We ought to do all we can to find Fred for his parents.”

“I’ll see what I can do after the exhibition is over,” promised Mr. Brown.  “I’ll ask the proprietor of the medicine wagon if I can get a chance.  But I’ll have to do it when the banjo player can’t hear, for in case he should be Fred—­which I hardly think can be true—­but if it should be he, and he heard me asking, he’d run away again.”

“Yes, I suppose he would,” said Mrs. Brown with a sigh.  “Oh, how foolish boys are sometimes.  They don’t know what is good for them,” and she looked at Bunny, as if wondering if the time would ever come when he would not be a “mother’s boy.”  She hoped not.

“Let’s get up as close as we can,” said Bunny.  “Maybe if it’s Fred we can tell, no matter if he is blacked up like a minstrel.”

“He doesn’t look at all like Fred to me,” said Sue.  “He looks so funny with his big red lips and his white collar.”

“That’s the way they all dress,” said Bunny.  “Come on, here’s a place we can squeeze through and see better.”

Bunny wiggled his way up among the people.  His sister followed him, and Mr. and Mrs. Brown, watching the children, knew where to find them when they wanted to go away.

“Now take a good look,” whispered Sue to Bunny, as they got very near the platform on which the boy sat.  She had made her whisper rather loud, and it came at just the time when the banjoist stopped playing, so that he and several persons heard the little girl.