Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/117



NLY a few birds were singing drowsily in the early morning dusk when Lonely stole through the side door, well out of sight from the bakery window, climbed the back fence, and cut across half a dozen vacant lots to the Cannery, and from there to the Boiler Works, and from there to the Railway Siding itself. The air was cool and quiet and dark, and the heavy dew wet his feet. He had gone forth breakfastless, stopping only long enough to devour a handful or two of malignantly green gooseberries from the Gubtills' bushes.

But for all that, it was a great and glorious morning.

For there, already drawing up on the Siding, was the shabbily flamboyant circus train, the gaudily lettered sleepers, the flat-cars with the solemnly covered wagons—wagons with wheels of vivid red and gold showing beneath the draggled canvas—the disembarking animals, the hurrying, hallooing, bustling, swearing