Boy Life: Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells — John Shaqi
Boy Life: Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean HowellsHowells, William Dean
General
Boy Life: Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells
Howells, William Dean
Boys
By-and-by he began to be sleepy, and then he dozed off, but he thought
it was hardly a minute before he heard the circus band, and knew that
the procession was coming for him. He jumped out of bed and put on his
things as fast as he could; but his roundabout had only one sleeve to
it, somehow, and he had to button the lower buttons of his trousers to
keep it on. He got his bundle and stole down to the front door without
seeming to touch his feet to anything, and when he got out on the front
steps he saw the circus magician coming along. By that time the music
had stopped and Pony could not see any procession. The magician had on a
tall, peaked hat, like a witch. He took up the whole street, he was so
wide in the black glazed gown that hung from his arms when he stretched
them out, for he seemed to be groping along that way, with his wand in
one hand, like a blind man.
He kept saying in a kind of deep, shaking voice, "It's all glory; it's
all glory," and the sound of those words froze Pony's blood. He tried to
get back into the house again, so that the magician should not find him,
but when he felt for the door-knob there was no door there anywhere;
nothing but a smooth wall. Then he sat down on the steps and tried to
shrink up so little that the magician would miss him; but he saw his
wide goggles getting nearer and nearer; and then his father and the
doctor were standing by him looking down at him, and the doctor said:
"He has been walking in his sleep; he must be bled," and he got out his
lancet, when Pony heard his mother calling: "Pony, Pony! What's the
matter? Have you got the nightmare?" and he woke up, and found it was
just morning.
The sun was shining in at his window, and it made him so glad to think
that by this time the circus was far away and he was not with it, that
he hardly knew what to do.
He was not very well for two or three days afterward, and his mother let
him stay out of school to see whether he was really going to be sick or
not. When he went back most of the fellows had forgotten that he had
been going to run off with the circus. Some of them that happened to
think of it plagued him a little and asked how he liked being a circus
actor.
Hen Billard was the worst; he said he reckoned the circus magician got
scared when he saw what a whaler Pony was, and told the circus men that
they would have to get a new tent to hold him; and that was the reason
why they didn't take him. Archy Hawkins said: "How long did you have to
wait on the front steps, Pony dear?" But after that he was pretty good
to him, and said he reckoned they had better not any of them pretend
that Pony had not tried to run off if they had not been up to see.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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