than a man's head and she
didn't touch the ground with her balancing pole at all. Nora could never
walk the rope like that. And the dancing ponies and the trained seals
and the dog that wound in and out among the spokes of a buggy wheel and
all the other acts thrilled Jerry and made him almost dizzy, they came
so fast; but best of all he liked the clowns with their funny faces and
droll antics. He did not pick out Whiteface the first time the clowns
came out, there were so many of them and they looked so much alike with
their white faces and red mouths.

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