Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/274

 thrown in my lot, and to envying them not a little their roving, adventurous, free-living life.St. Valery-en-Caux, 9 a.m.—We were encamped in the centre of the town, in front of the Hôtel de Ville. In less than an hour and a half every tent was in its place, and the horses, tethered in droves, were clattering to water through the streets.

It was settled that I was to mess in the elephant tent with the Armstrongs—Joe, the elephant-keeper, Maggie his wife, and Lieutenant George, the lion-tamer, his brother, better known to the public as "Himalayan Henry."

They were both handsome, strapping fellows. George, the "lieutenant," had been in the show business all his life. He wore a trailing, coal-black moustache, and his hat cocked jauntily on the side of his head, and boasted himself a terrible chap with ladies. Joe had been but three years in the show. Before that he had been a tram-conductor in Birmingham. He was slow of speech, hulking, and shy. Maggie was a Lancashire girl. She had big blue eyes, a pale complexion, and rosy, sensitive mouth. She had been married just six months. She bullied her husband; George, on the strength of his superior salary, bullied them both; and they all three bullied "Scottie," or "Jimmy Pimples," the little under elephant-keeper, a sandy-haired, crimson-faced, unshaven, unwashed ruffian, who helped Maggie Armstrong to wash up the dishes, did odd jobs for us, and rated the elephants in generous Glasgow.

"Scottie" slept on a hay-bed beside the camels and messed with the coons beneath the tack-waggon; and we four lived in a small double tent pitched in a corner of the large one that covered the elephants.

There were seven of them, as I have said.—"Jim," the patriarch, with