Andy the Acrobat | Page 4

a clown could cover in a given time on a handspring basis. He had shocked the schoolmaster by handing in an essay on "The Art of Bareback Riding."
Andy had tried every acrobatic trick he had seen depicted in the glowing advance sheets announcing the circus. To repeated efforts in this direction his admiring schoolmates had continually incited him.
He had tried the double somersault in the schoolroom that morning. Andy had made a famous success of the experiment, but with the direful result of smashing a desk, and subsequent expulsion.
Thinking over all this, Andy realized that the beginning and end of all his troubles was his irrepressible tendency towards acrobatic performances.
"And I simply can't help it!" he cried in a kind of reckless despair. "It's born in me, I guess. Oh, don't I hope Aunt Lavinia turns me out, as she has often threatened to do. Say, if she only would, and I could join some show, and travel and see things and--live!"
Andy threw himself flat on the green sward. He closed his eyes and gave himself up to a rapture of thought.
Gay banners, brightly comparisoned horses, white wildernesses of circus tents, tinselled clowns, royal ringmasters, joyful strains of music floated through his active brain. It was a day dream of rare beauty, and he could not tear himself away from it.
An idle hour went by before Andy realized it. As echoing voices rang out on the quiet air, he got to his feet rubbing his eyes as if they were dazzled.
"Recess already," Andy said. "Well, I'll lay low until it's over. I don't want to meet the boys just now. Then I'll do some more thinking. I suppose I've got to decide to go home. Ugh! but I hate to--and I just won't until the very last moment."
Andy went in among the shrubbery farther away from the road, but he could not hide himself. An active urchin discovered him from a distance. He yelled out riotously to his comrades, and they all came trooping along pell-mell in Andy's direction.
Their expelled schoolmate and favorite greeted them with a genial smile, never showing the white feather in the least.
His chums found him carelessly tossing half-a-dozen crab apples from hand to hand. Andy was an adept in "the glass ball act." He described rapid semicircles, festoons and double crosses. He shot the green objects up into the air in all directions, and went through the performance without a break.
"Isn't Andy a crackerjack?" gloated enthusiastic little Tod Smith. "Oh, say, Andy, you won't disappoint us now, will you?"
"What about?" inquired Andy.
"The rest of it."
"The rest of what?"
"Your show. You know you promised--"
"Oh, that's all off!" declared Andy gloomily. "I've made trouble enough already with my circus antics, I'm thinking."
"Don't you be mean now, Andy Wildwood!" broke in Ned Wilfer, a particular friend of the expelled boy. "Old Darrow has given us a double recess. We have a good forty minutes to have fun in. Come on."
The speaker seized Andy's reluctant arm and began pulling him towards the road.
"Got the horse?" he asked of a companion.
"Sure," eagerly nodded the lad addressed. "I got him fixed up, platform, blanket and all, before school. He's tied up, waiting, at the end of father's ten-acre lot."
"Yes, and I've got the hoop all ready there, too," chimed in Alf Warren, another schoolboy.
"See here, fellows," demurred Andy dubiously, "I haven't much heart for frolic. I'm expelled, you know, and there's Aunt Lavinia--"
"Forget it!" interrupted Ned. "That will all right itself."
Andy consented to accompany the gleeful, expectant throng. They had arranged the night before to hold an amateur circus exhibition "on their own hook."
One boy had agreed to provide the "fiery steed" for the occasion. Alf Warren was to be property man, and donate the blazing hoop.
They soon reached the corner of the ten-acre lot. There, tethered to a stake and grazing placidly, was a big-boned, patient-looking horse.
Across his back was strapped a small platform made of a cistern cover. This had been cushioned with a folded buggy robe.
Alf Warren dove excitedly into a clump of bushes. He reappeared triumphantly holding aloft a big hoop. It was wound round and round with strips of woolen cloth which exuded an unmistakable and unpleasant odor of kerosene.
"Say! it's going to be just like the circus picture on the side of the post office, isn't it?" chuckled little Tod Smith.
Ned Wilier took down the fence bars and led the horse out into the road.
Andy pulled off his coat and shoes. He stowed them alongside a rock near the fence. Then he produced some elastic bands and secured his trousers around the ankles.
His eyes brightened and he forgot all his troubles for the time being, as he ran back a bit.
"Out of the way there!" shouted Andy with glowing cheeks, posing for a forward dash.
He