h hard,
hard, or he would have broken down crying.

"If it's for that, you mustn't, Pony, dear. You don't know how you
frightened me. When your snowball hit me, I felt sure it was a bat, and
I'm so afraid of bats, you know. I didn't mean to hurt my poor boy's
feelings so, and you mustn't mind it any more, Pony."

[Illustration: "HE BEGAN BEING COLD AND STIFF WITH HER THE VERY
NEXT MORNING"]

She stooped down and kissed him on the forehead, but he did not move or
say anything; only, after that he felt more forgiving towards his mother.
He made up his mind to be good to her along with the rest when he came
back with the circus. But still he meant to run off with the circus. He
did not see how he could do anything else, for he had told all the boys
that day that he was going to do it; and when they just laughed, and said:
"Oh yes. Think you can fool your grandmother! It'll be like running off
with the Indians," Pony wagged his head, and said they would see whether
it would or not, and offered to bet them what they dared.

The morning of the circus day all the fellows went out to the corporation
line to meet the circus procession. There were ladies and knights, the
first thing, riding on spotted horses; and then a band chariot, all made
up of swans and dragons. There were about twenty baggage wagons; but
before you got to them there was the greatest thing of all. It was a
chariot drawn by twelve Shetland ponies, and it was shaped like a big
shell, and around in the bottom of the shell there were little circus
actors, boys and girls, dressed in their circus clothes, and they all
looked exactly like fairies. They scarce seemed to see the fellows, as
they ran alongside of their chariot, but Hen Billard and Archy Hawkins,
who were always cutting up, got close enough to throw some peanuts to the
circus boys, and some of the little circus girls laughed, and the driver
looked around and cracked his whip at the fellows, and they all had to get
out of the way then.

Jim Leonard said that the circus boys and girls were all stolen, and
nobody was allowed to come close to them for fear they would try to send
word to their friends. Some of the fellows did not believe it, and wanted
to know how he knew it; and he said he read it in a paper; after that
nobody could deny it. But he said that if you went with the circus men of
your own free will they would treat you first-rate; only they would give
you burnt brandy to keep you little;