Page:To-morrow Morning (1927).pdf/113

 water, the performing dogs barking on their semi-circle of stools, the lady in white tights and spangles who ran forward, holding out her hands for the applause they so earnestly gave her, the sad gentleman with the big mustache who stood beside the colored pictures on the screen, singing:

The Irish comedian, the Hebrew comedian, the tramp comedian with his scarlet nose, getting off their jokes, while the white magic of the children's laughter made cheap and vulgar things funny and lovely.

Winter, with snowdrifts and crystal trees, and Christmas coming. Jodie waited outside of shops in the cold, hoping that people would engage him to carry bundles so that he could earn enough to buy his mother the toilet set on a turbulent sea of blue satin in Small's window. Snuffling, joggling from one cold cast-iron foot to the other, he would look up at the shoppers hopefully, but he was too shy to ask anyone in a voice loud enough to be heard, so he had to give her a calendar painted with a sprig of mud-colored holly, just as he had last Christmas.

Then spring again. Easter. Kate sat up late at night painting faces on Easter eggs for the children, dressing an egg in a crocus cap, or a clown's ruff, or a baby's frilled bonnet. Hoagland brought them large