ver do that! He was just
what I expected of him, though, when I pitched. And if Badger and Bart
were friends and could, or would, work together, they would make a good
battery."
"You will have to coach Badger some," Inza suggested.
"Yes. The captain of the ball-team wants me to. He thinks there is good
stuff in both of them, if it can only be properly developed."
The three got out at a transfer station, and waited for another car.
"Dere she comes!" yelled an excited youngster.
The "she" he referred to was not the expected car, but the head of a
circus procession, which was parading the principal streets as an
advertisement of the performances to be given in the big tents in the
suburbs that afternoon and night.
Merriwell and the girls looked in the direction indicated. The crowd at
the corner seemed to become thicker. People began to swarm out of the
doorways and stream out into the middle of the street.
"And this is scholarly New Haven!" exclaimed Inza. "Wild over a circus
parade!"
"We're not in the scholarly part of New Haven!" laughed Frank. "I
confess that I like to see a circus parade myself!"
Inza showed evidences that she liked the same thing, for she craned her
handsome neck and stood on tiptoe to catch the first glimpse. The
nodding plumes on the heads of the horses drawing the gilded band-wagon
came into view, and at the same moment the band began to crash forth its
resonant music. Children danced and capered, heads were popped out of
second-story windows, and the pushing crowd grew denser.
The band-wagon came slowly down the street in the bright spring
sunshine, followed by the performers, mounted on well-groomed horses,
some of which were beautifully mottled. There were other horses, many of
them--a few drawing chariots, driven by Amazons. Then came the funny
clown, in his little cart, with his jokes and grimaces for the children.
There was another band-wagon, as gorgeous as the first, at the head of
the procession of wild-beast cages. Its music was more deafening than
that of the other. The street-cars seemed to have stopped running, owing
to the packed crowds, and Frank and his girl friends remained on the
corner curiously watching the scene.
Suddenly a fractious horse jerked away from the man who had been
standing at its head holding it, and whirling short about,
half-overturned the wagon to which it was hitched and raced wildly down
the street. People scattered in every directio
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