ast Saturday, but it took the caramel layer to win the prize, Faith!"

CHAPTER XVII

THE CIRCUS AND THE MISSIONARY

"Oh, look, Allee! See the elephants and lions and giraffes and zebras on
that poster. It's the cirkis as sure as I'm alive! Do you know I've
always wanted to see the cirkis, and this is the first time I ever knew
one to stop at Parker."

"How do you know it will stop here?" asked skeptical Allee, who was just
beginning to read, and found the long words on the billboard too much
for her to master.

"'Cause it says so. Parker, the eighteenth, Allee. Just think, that's
only next Saturday! Just a week from today! Isn't it lucky it's on
Saturday? Do you s'pose we can go?"

"I 'xpect it will take money for that just like it does for everything
else," answered the blue-eyed baby with a comically philosophical air;
"and you know Gail never has any for such things as that."

"Well, this is cheaper than most things, 'cause it says 'a-dults
twenty-five cents, and children fifteen cents.' The Fair cost half a
dollar for a-dults and twenty-five cents for children. If there is a
chance to go to anything cheap, we better try hard to go, Allee, for
that doesn't happen often."

"Maybe Gail might not like to have us go even if we could get the
money."

"She does have some queer notions about places, doesn't she? At first
she didn't want us to see that moving picture show at the church, but
when Brother Strong went and took us, she thought it was all right.
We'll ask about the cirkis before we tell her that it's coming, and
maybe we can find out that way whether she would let us go."

"I don't think we would have to ask much, 'cause she thinks cirkises are
bad, and I don't b'lieve she would like to have us there."

"What makes you so sure? I never have heard her say a thing about them."

"She told Hope so the time Hope wanted to see '_Julio and Romiet_' when
they studied it in school."

"That wasn't a cirkis, that was a theatre, Allee. That's different. It
takes painted people to play out the words in the theatre, but at the
cirkis only real animals act, and do tricks that take brains to learn.
Why, this picture shows a nelephant beating a drum. Now, elephants live
in the _jumbles_ of Africa, Hope says, and they don't have drums to beat
there. Hunters go to their houses and catch them and teach them how to
drum, 'cause they have brains enough to learn. Look at that lion with
its mouth open and that wo