"I've got all that settled, Toby; an' when you say you're willin' to go ahead an' fix up the show, I'll be on hand with a tent that'll make your eyes stick out over a foot." Bob nodded his head to show he was convinced Reddy could do just as he had promised; but Toby was anxious for more particulars, and insisted on knowing where this very necessary portion of a circus was coming from. "You see a tent is a big thing," he said seriously; "an' it would cost more money than the fellers in this town could raise if they should pick all the strawberries in Uncle Dan'l's pasture." "Oh, I don't say as the tent Reddy's got his eye on is a reg'lar one like a real circus has," said Bob slowly and candidly, as he began to draw on the side of the wood-shed a picture of what he probably intended should represent a horse; "but he knows how he can rig one up that'll be big enough, an' look stavin'." With this information Toby was obliged to be satisfied; and with the view of learning more of the details, in case his companions had arranged for them, he asked: "Where you goin' to get the company--the folks that ride, an' turn hand-springs, an' all them things?" "Ben Cushing can turn twice as many hand-springs as any feller you ever saw, an' he can walk on his hands twice round the engine-house. I guess you couldn't find many circuses that could beat him, an' he's been practising in his barn all the chance he could get for more'n a week." Without intending to do so, Bob had thus let the secret out that the scheme had already been talked up before Toby was consulted, and then there was no longer any reason for concealment. "You see we thought we'd kinder get things fixed," said Reddy quickly, anxious to explain away the seeming deception he had been guilty of, "an' we wouldn't say anything to you till we knew whether we could get one up or not." "An' we're goin' to ask three cents to come in; an' lots of the fellers have promised to buy tickets if we'll let 'em do some of the ridin', or else lead the hosses." "But how are you goin' to get any hosses?" asked Toby, thoroughly surprised at the way in which the scheme had already been developed. "Reddy can get Jack Douglass's blind one, an' we can train him so's he'll go 'round the ring all right; an' your Uncle Dan'l will let you have his old white one that's lame, if you ask him. I ain't sure but I can get one of Chandler Merrill's ponies," continued Bob, now so excited by his subject that he left his picture while it was yet a three-legged horse, and stood in front of his friends; "an' if we could sell tickets enough, we could hire one of Rube Rowe's hosses for you to ride." "An' Bob's goin' to be the clown, an' his mother's goin' to make him a suit of clothes out of one of his grandmother's curtains," added Reddy, as he snapped an imaginary whip with so many unnecessary flourishes that he tumbled over the saw-horse, thereby mixing a large quantity of sawdust in his brilliantly colored hair.