kept her eye on two sauntering
militia-men in uniform, but they only read her sign and seated
themselves on the curbstone, to smoke. Then a stout black soldier came
in sight; but he turned and sat down at a table to eat oysters, served
by a vast and smiling matron of his own race. But even this, though
perhaps the most wholly cheerful exhibition that the day yielded, had
no charms for Madam Delia. Her own dinner was ordered at the tavern
after the morning show; and where is the human being who does not
resent the spectacle of another human being who dines earlier than
himself?

It grew warmer, so warm that the canvas walls of the tent seemed to
grasp a certain armful of heat and keep it inexorably in; so warm that
the out-of-door man was dozing as he leaned against the tent-stake, and
only recovered himself at the sound of Madam Delia's penetrating voice,
and again began to summon people in, though there was nobody within
hearing. It was so warm that Mr. De Marsan, born Bangs, the wedded
husband of Madam Delia, dozed as he walked up and down the sidewalk,
and had hardly voice enough to testify, as an unconcerned spectator, to
the value of the show. Only the unwearied zeal of the showwoman defied
alike thermometer and neglect, She kept her eye on everything,--on Old
Bill as he fed the monkeys within, on Monsieur Comstock as he hung the
trapeze for the performance, on the little girls as they tried to
peddle their songs, on the sleepy out-of-door man, and on the people
who did not draw near. If she could, she would have played all the
parts in her own small company, and would have put the inexhaustible
nervous energies of her own New England nature (she was born at
Meddibemps, State of Maine) into all. Apart from this potent stimulus,
not a soul in the establishment, save little Gerty, possessed any
energy whatever. Old Bill had unfortunately never learned total
abstinence from the wild animals among which he had passed his life;
Monsieur Comstock's brains had chiefly run into his arms and legs; and
Mr. De Marsan, the nominal head of the establishment, was a peaceful
Pennsylvanian, who was wont to move as slowly as if he were one of
those processions that take a certain number of hours to pass a given
point. This Madam Delia understood and expected; he was an innocent who
was to be fed, clothed, and directed; but his languor was no excuse for
the manifest feebleness of the out-of-door man. "That man don't know
how to ta