Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/135

 days were forgotten in the swamping tidal-wave of pride which swept over the young lady who had once known and been faithful to Lonely. And other children heard the cry, and even the clown was overlooked, and the elephants half forgotten, and the hyenas allowed to go by with a passing glance.

But like all triumphs, its hour was brief. Prodigious and vast and unrivaled and gigantic as the circus procession had been advertised to be, it had, like all such things, to come to an end sometime. The cheering melted away, the music died down, the calliope screamed its last note, the horses were unhitched and hurried off, the wagons were dismantled, and Lonely was once more hustled down into the stuffy little dressing-tent.

Here he experienced a second qualm of rebellious anger, as he found himself seized by a stout woman in a dirty apron, and once more peeled like an orange and ordered to get into his clothes, though, indeed,—and this he saw to his secret chagrin,—the dozen busy circus-women paid no more attention to him than if he had been a little girl putting on her shoes and stockings; so, holding that what was sauce