Polly of the Circus | Page 4

her first appearance in the circus lot, clinging timidly
to the hand of the man who had just made her his wife. Her eyes had
met Polly's, with a look of appeal that had gone straight to the child's
simple heart.
A few nights later the newcomer had allowed herself to be strapped
into the cumbersome "Leap of Death" machine which hurled itself
through space at each performance, and flung itself down with force
enough to break the neck of any unskilled rider. Courage and steady
nerve were the requisites for the job, so the manager had said; but any
physician would have told him that only a trained acrobat could long
endure the nervous strain, the muscular tension, and the physical rack

of such an ordeal.
What matter? The few dollars earned in this way would mean a great
deal to the mother, whom the girl's marriage had left desolate.
Polly had looked on hungrily the night that the mother had taken the
daughter in her arms to say farewell in the little country town where the
circus had played before her marriage. She could remember no
woman's arms about HER, for it was fourteen years since tender hands
had carried her mother from the performers' tent into the moonlit lot to
die. The baby was so used to seeing "Mumsie" throw herself wearily on
the ground after coming out of the "big top" exhausted, that she crept to
the woman's side as usual that night, and gazed laughingly into the
sightless eyes, gurgling and prattling and stroking the unresponsive
face. There were tears from those who watched, but no word was
spoken.
Clown Toby and the big "boss canvas-man" Jim had always taken turns
amusing and guarding little Polly, while her mother rode in the ring. So
Toby now carried the babe to another side of the lot, and Jim bore the
lifeless body of the mother to the distant ticket-wagon, now closed for
the night, and laid it upon the seller's cot.
"It's allus like this in the end," he murmured, as he drew a piece of
canvas over the white face and turned away to give orders to the men
who were beginning to load the "props" used earlier in the
performance.
When the show moved on that night it was Jim's strong arms that lifted
the mite of a Polly close to his stalwart heart, and climbed with her to
the high seat on the head wagon. Uncle Toby was entrusted with the
brown satchel in which the mother had always carried Polly's scanty
wardrobe. It seemed to these two men that the eyes of the woman were
fixed steadily upon them.
Barker, the manager, a large, noisy, good-natured fellow, at first
mumbled something about the kid being "excess baggage," but his
objections were only half-hearted, for like the others, he was already

under the hypnotic spell of the baby's round, confiding eyes, and he
eventually contented himself with an occasional reprimand to Toby,
who was now sometimes late on his cues. Polly wondered, at these
times, why the old man's stories were so suddenly cut short just as she
was so "comfy" in the soft grass at his feet. The boys who used to "look
sharp" because of their boss at loading time, now learned that they
might loiter so long as "Muvver Jim" was "hikin' it round for the kid."
It was Polly who had dubbed big Jim "Muvver," and the sobriquet had
stuck to him in spite of his six feet two, and shoulders that an athlete
might have envied. Little by little, Toby grew more stooped and small
lines of anxiety crept into the brownish circles beneath Jim's eyes, the
lips that had once shut so firmly became tender and tremulous, but
neither of the men would willingly have gone back to the old
emptiness.
It was a red letter day in the circus, when Polly first managed to climb
up on the pole of an unhitched wagon and from there to the back of a
friendly, Shetland pony. Jim and Toby had been "neglectin' her
eddication" they declared, and from that time on, the blood of Polly's
ancestors was given full encouragement.
Barker was quick to grasp the advantage of adding the kid to the daily
parade. She made her first appearance in the streets upon something
very like a Newfoundland dog, guarded from the rear by Jim, and from
the fore by a white-faced clown who was thought to be all the funnier
because he twisted his neck so much.
From the street parade to Polly's first appearance in the "big top," had
seemed a short while to Jim and Toby. They were proud to see her
circling the ring in bright colours and to hear the cheers of the people,