Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/293

 harnessing "Tim" to the lions' cage; within the elephant tent Maggie was boiling the water for tea, and laying the cloth on the piled trusses of hay.

One after another I bid them good-bye, strangely reluctant to leave them, childishly eager to prolong indefinitely this short moment of departure. The "lieutenant" and I promised to write regularly to one another, and we hurriedly arranged how we would meet again next year in the South.

Then I pushed my way through the crowd of loungers that surrounded the camp, and turned slowly away down the boulevard towards the railway station.

Twenty minutes later, as my train steamed out of the city, I could hear the distant wavering strains of the band, and I could see the sunlight glinting on the white, bulging canvas of the big show-tent.