were
flying, and the streams of strangers that had been flowing into town
were eddying at the street corners. The balloon-vender wormed his way
through the buzzing crowd, leaving his wares in a red and blue trail
behind him. The bark of the fakir rasped the tightening nerves of the
town. Everywhere was hubbub; everywhere was the dusty, heated air of
the festival; everywhere were men and women ready for the marvel that
had come out of the great world, bringing pomp and circumstance in its
gilded train; everywhere in Willow Creek the spirit which put the blue
sash about the country girl's waist and the flag in her beau's hat ran
riot, save at the home of Miss Morgan. There the bees hummed lazily
over the old-fashioned flower garden; there the cantankerous jays
jabbered in the cottonwoods; there the muffled noises of the town
festival came as from afar; there Miss Morgan puttered about her
morning's work, trying vainly to croon a gospel hymn; and there Bud
Perkins, prone upon the sitting-room sofa, made parallelograms and
squares and diamonds with the dots and lines on the ceiling paper.
When the throb of the drum and the blare of the brass had set the
heart of the town to dancing, some wave of the ecstasy seeped through
the lilac bushes and into the quiet house. The boy on the sofa started
up suddenly, checked himself ostentatiously, walked to the bird
cage, and began to play with the canary. The wave carried the little
spinster to the window. The circus had a homestead in human hearts
before John Wesley staked his claim, and even so good a Methodist as
Miss Morgan could not be deaf to the scream of the calliope nor the
tinkle of cymbals.

[Illustration: _Dressed-up children were flitting along the side
streets, hurrying their seniors_.]

[Illustration: _The Balloon-Vender wormed his way through the buzzing
crowd, leaving his wares in a red and blue trail behind him_.]

[Illustration: _The Blue Sash about the country girl's waist and the
flag in her Beau's hat_.]

To emphasize his desolation, Bud left the room, and sat down by a tree
in the yard, with his back to the kitchen door and window. There Miss
Morgan saw him playing mumble-peg in a desultory fashion. When the
courtiers of Boyville came home from the parade they found him; and
because he sat playing a silent, sullen, solitary game, and responded
to their banter only with melancholy grunts, they knew that the worst
had befallen him. Much confab followed, in wh