I rose right up on my feet and I went over and put out my hand to him. "Why, Nick," I says, "don't you see? We was afraid of you. _I_ was afraid of you. I froze right up and give up telling you about folks hanging themselves and all sorts of interesting things because I thought you wouldn't care. Why, they don't know you care!" "Don't know I care?" says he. "But ain't I showed 'em--ten thousand dollars' worth?" "Oh," I says, "that way! Yes, they know that way. In dollars they know; but they don't know in feelings. It's them," I says, "that counts." I set down by him, right on a pile of my new sewing. "Look here," I says, "Nick Nordman, if that's the way you feel about coming back and about the village, let's you and me fix up some way to make folks know you feel that way." His face lit up. "How?" says he, doubting. I thought a minute. I don't know why it was, but all at once there flashed into my head the way he had been with the boys, and the way the boys had been to him; that was what he was wanting, and that was what had been lacking, and that was what he didn't know how to make come. And he was lonesome for it. "It ought to be," says I, feeling my way in my own head, "some way that'll make folks--Oh, Nick," I says, jumping up, "I know the very thing!" Pitcairn's Circus that wintered not twenty miles from us, and that had got so big and successful that it hadn't been to Friendship Village before in twenty years! And this year, when they'd wanted to come, the council had put the license so high that they refused it. And yet, one morning, we woke up to find the town plastered up and down with the big flaming bill posters of Pitcairn's Circus itself. The town had all it could do to believe in its own good luck. But there was no room to doubt. There they were: BALLET OF TWELVE HUNDRED TREMENDOUS PAGEANT AND SPECTACLE OF ESTHER, THE BEAUTIFUL QUEEN MAGNIFICENT COSTUMES, REGAL WOMEN, GORGEOUS JEWELS, DIVERTING DANCERS, SOLOS AND ENSEMBLES * * * * * A HUNDRED TRAINED RIDERS, A HUNDRED ACROBATS, A HUNDRED ANIMALS FROM THE HEART OF THE WILD HILLS ANIMALS TRAINED--ANIMALS SAVAGE-- ANIMALS WONDERFUL GIGANTIC STREET PARADE FREE! FREE! FREE! The whole town planned to turn out. There was to be no evening performance, and I schemed to have us all take our lunch--a whole crowd of us--and go over to the Pump pasture right from the parade, and spread it under the big maple, and see the sights while we et. I broached it to Mis' Toplady and Timothy and Eppleby and Marne Holcomb and Postmaster and Mis' Sykes, and some more--Mis' Arnet and Mis' Sturgis and Mis' Hubbelthwait; and they, all of them, and Lucy and me, fell to planning on who'd take what, and running over to each other's houses about sweet pickles and things we hadn't thought of, and we had a real nice old-fashioned time.