Presently he was securely mounted on John Reed’s great shoulders, and watched the jumping of the horses, which were sent from all parts of the country for sale. It was exciting to see the dealers flap their crackling calico flags, and with strange, uncouth cries urge on the animal actually under inspection to show off his paces, and to leap an adjoining hedge—the latter feat being one not often accomplished; the rider indeed, much to the delight of the lookers-on, more frequently taking the fence than the horse. It was, however, a very amusing sight, and Johnny shouted and laughed and drummed on his father’s chest with his shining little boots, and stared about him at the seething mass of heads, and at the horses thundering past, and at those other horses tied up in pickets or rows, some of them plentifully bedecked with ribbons, while the manes and tails of others were curiously ornamented with straw. Over yonder were the booths and the tents and the waggons, and the red-and-yellow roundabouts and the swings and the shooting-galleries, and the crowds and crowds of merry folk. Johnny’s spirits rose more and more as the moments passed, and he presently found himself obliged not only to drum upon his father’s chest, but to jig up and down upon his shoulder, supporting himself by the crown of John Reed’s best Sunday hat. “Hold hard!” cried his parent good-naturedly, when a more than usually ecstatic movement had well-nigh bonneted him. “Sit still, my lad. Where be climbin’ to, eh?” “I’m lookin’ at the roundabouts,” chanted Johnny; “all the folks ridin’, and the harses goin’ up an’ down. There’s Maggie and Jim—and Rosie a-ridin’ behind! O-o-oh, Dada, do ’ee take I to ’em!” “Well, a promise is a promise. I did say I’d take ’ee, didn’t I? Come along, then jump down! That’s the boy! Now we’ll go. Which shall it be? That great, big, red un?”—as the child pointed with his small forefinger. “We’ll make straight for he, then. Now, will ’ee ride in front o’ Dada, or will ’ee have a horse all to yourself?” Johnny’s eyes were growing rounder and rounder, and his little hot hand clutched his father’s finger with almost feverish eagerness, as he answered stoutly that he’d like to ride all by his own self. “Well done!” cried Reed admiringly. “You wouldn’t think the spirit of en,” he remarked to the red-faced proprietress of the merry-go-round as he paid the fare. “Ye’d think a little chap same as this ’ud be afeared to go alone. But no, not he. ‘I’d like to ride all by my own self,’ says he, as cool as a cucumber—an’ him but just turned four years old.”