Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/275

 with his wizened, wrinkled forehead, his tattered, worn-out ears, and weak, sunken eyes, for ever wearily winking with the fatigue of his hundred and twenty summers, submitting without a murmur to the buffetings of his coquettish granddaughter, "Ida"; "Rose," a fat, gluttonous, middle-aged dame, and "Palm," her husband, with his great indolently humorous face—an entirely respectable bourgeois ménage; "Nick," the youngster, always squealing and stealing the hay; "Tim," the monster elephant, restlessly rolling his vicious white-rimmed eye (he had killed a man some six months ago); impatient, irascible, and sullenly watchful of his little wife "Tiny," the beauty of the band, jealously marching by her side on the road, with his trunk around her neck, and in the evenings, rumbling to himself with pride, as he scraped her down with the jagged edge of an old condensed-milk tin.Midday—The post had just come in. The manager, a freckled, sandy-haired young man, was giving out the letters in the dressing-room, sitting swinging his long legs on an elephant-tub, with his hat jammed tight on the back of his head. One by one the men came forward; some sheepishly, some jauntily, some with tremulous eagerness. And the more illiterate ones remained loitering at the mouth of the tent, hesitatingly fingering their envelopes, curiously revolving them, trying to decipher the post-marks. Sam Giddens, the clown, a bald, thick-set, elderly gentleman, adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles, and plunged into a copy of the Era. Quito, the jockey, and the two tumbling boys were discussing the incidents of the journey.

E got me doun, smashed my 'at in, and tore my coat a'most off my back," Tommy was explaining.

The Yellow Book—Vol. VII.