Andy the Acrobat | Page 4

exhibiting in a neighboring town, had
been advertised in glowing prose and lurid pictures on big billboards all
over the county.
Juvenile Fairview was set on fire anew with the circus fever. Andy's
rope-walking feat and double somersault act from desk to desk that
morning had resulted, getting him into the trouble of his life. It
furthermore had interrupted other performances on the programme
listed for later on that very day.
Andy's head had been full of the circus since he had seen its first poster
at a cross-roads. He could never pass a heap of sawdust without cutting
a caper.
In the spelling contest, he had stupefied his fellow students by nimbly
rattling over such words as "megatherian," "stupendous," "zoological
aggregation," and the like.
One of his sums covered the number of yards 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,