And at this command the canvas wall of the round white tent was parted by the very hands of the one who had been jiggling it in his impatience to put it aside; and, little by little, as if he feared that those who slept might waken, there appeared the funniest little old man in all the world. First came his head, all white and smooth and crowned by a queer round hat that came to a point at the top. And his ears were white, too, and so was his face, except for his red, red lips and five curious spots of red—one on his chin, one on his brow, one on each cheek, and one on the tip of his long, funny nose. He wore a collar that was all ruffled and round and a baggy white suit, trimmed with great polka-dot patches, that might have been likened to very red apples, except for the fact that half of them were blue. “Come, come! Make haste there, Dan—if, indeed, you are Diggeldy Dan,” cried the bird from its perch on the little round pole. “Quite so, quite so,” chuckled the funny old man. And, suiting himself to his words, he made a quick skip into the open, danced three steps to the left and three to the right, and then, doffing his queer, sugar-loaf hat, made a very grand courtesy in the direction of the bird, saying as he did so: “At your service, little messenger.” “Ah, then you know who I am!” exclaimed the one who had come out of the west. “But I must be very sure. So tell me, if you can, what rhymes with this: “O, Dan, Dan, Diggeldy Dan.” “Why,” answered the clown—for you must have guessed that he was a clown—“Why,” he repeated, “You are the courier from Too-Bo-Tan.” But though the bird nodded in approval, as if to say, “Yes, yes, that is correct,” it still seemed reluctant to admit that the man was really Diggeldy Dan. So it put its head first to one side and then to the other, and puckered its very blue brows, as if thinking up some further test. And then it spoke again. “Diggeldy Dan—if, indeed, you are Diggeldy Dan—who was it told you the last line of the rhyme?” “Why,” answered the clown with great readiness, “it was the Pretty Lady with the Blue-Blue Eyes. She came to me in a dream last night—riding her White-White Horse through the skies. She wakened me, or at least I thought she did, by tickling my nose with her slim little whip. She said: ‘To-morrow, after the circus is over and the great crowd has gone home to its supper, and after the people of the circus have had their suppers and are come back to the shady places in and about the big and little tents, to read and to tell their tales and take their ease, they will all fall into a very deep sleep—that is, all but Diggeldy Dan.’” And, at this, the clown paused to take a much-needed breath; for he had become somewhat excited in telling his story and, to speak the truth, had quite forgotten to breathe between sentences. But at a sign from the bird, he went on: