Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/126

 "Will I go on to-day?" he asked, in a transport.

"On? Go on? How d' you mean?"

"You said I was to be one o' the tumblers?" said Lonely, bravely.

The man was either too busy or too generous to laugh outright at the boy. He glanced down into the hungry, wistful face, and for one fleeting moment the grim corners of his mouth went up. Then, with a brusque "Ticket-wagon at one!" he waved the boy aside, and a moment later was in a fiery dispute about the beef supply for the lions, heatedly resenting the monopolistic methods of Chamboro's local butcher. To his last day Lonely always privately believed that it was Piggie Brennan's father who had stood between him and a life of never-ending music and spangles and applause. A butcher and his sordid squabbles about the price of beef!—to come between him and his eluding heaven! And Lonely, deep down in his heart, determined that some day he would take it out of that butcher's son's hide, if ever he got the chance.

He tried to worm his way back through the crowd, at least to demand his ticket. But