Toby Tyler | Page 7

sound that seemed to come from the man's throat,
and for a few moments he feared that his companion was choking. But
he soon understood that this was simply an attempt to laugh, and he at
once decided that it was a very poor style of laughing.
"So you object to being called sonny, do you?"
"Well, I'd rather be called Toby, for, you see, that's my name."
"All right, my boy; we'll call you Toby. I suppose you thought it was a
mighty fine thing to run away an' jine a circus, didn't you?"
Toby started in affright, looked around cautiously, and then tried to
peer down through the small square aperture, guarded by iron rods, that
opened into the cage just back of the seat they were sitting on. Then he
turned slowly around to the driver, and asked, in a voice sunk to a
whisper: "How did you know that I was runnin' away? Did he tell
you?" and Toby motioned with his thumb as if he were pointing out
someone behind him.
It was the driver's turn now to look around in search of the "he"
referred to by Toby.
"Who do you mean?" asked the man, impatiently.

"Why, the old feller; the one in the cart there. I think he knew I was
runnin' away, though he didn't say anything about it; but he looked just
as if he did."
The driver looked at Toby in perfect amazement for a moment, and
then, as if suddenly understanding the boy, relapsed into one of those
convulsive efforts that caused the blood to rush up into his face and
gave him every appearance of having a fit.
"You must mean one of the monkeys," said the driver, after he had
recovered his breath, which had been almost shaken out of his body by
the silent laughter. "So you thought a monkey had told me what any
fool could have seen if he had watched you for five minutes."
"Well," said Toby, slowly, as if he feared he might provoke one of
those terrible laughing spells again, "I saw him tonight, an' he looked as
if he knew what I was doin'; so I up an' told him, an' I didn't know but
he'd told you, though he didn't look to me like a feller that would be
mean."
There was another internal shaking on the part of the driver, which
Toby did not fear so much, since he was getting accustomed to it, and
then the man said, "Well, you are the queerest little cove I ever saw."
"I s'pose I am," was the reply, accompanied by a long drawn sigh. "I
don't seem to amount to so much as the other fellers do, an' I guess it's
because I'm always hungry; you see, I eat awful, Uncle Dan'l says."
The only reply which the driver made to this plaintive confession was
to put his hand down into the deepest recesses of one of his deep
pockets and to draw therefrom a huge doughnut, which he handed to
his companion.
Toby was so much at his ease by this time that the appetite which had
failed him at supper had now returned in full force, and he devoured the
doughnut in a most ravenous manner.
"You're too small to eat so fast," said the man, in a warning tone, as the

last morsel of the greasy sweetness disappeared, and he fished up
another for the boy. "Some time you'll get hold of one of the India
rubber doughnuts that they feed to circus people, an' choke yourself to
death."
Toby shook his head, and devoured this second cake as quickly as he
had the first, craning his neck, and uttering a funny little squeak as the
last bit went down, just as a chicken does when he gets too large a
mouthful of dough.
"I'll never choke," he said, confidently. "I'm used to it; and Uncle Dan'l
says I could eat a pair of boots an' never wink at 'em; but I don't just
believe that."
As the driver made no reply to this remark Toby watched with no little
interest all that was passing on around him. Each of the wagons had a
lantern fastened to the hind axle, and these lights could be seen far
ahead on the road, as if a party of fireflies had started in single file on
an excursion. The trees by the side of the road stood out weird and
ghostly looking in the darkness, and the rumble of the carts ahead and
behind formed a musical accompaniment to the picture that sounded
strangely doleful.
Mile after mile was passed over in perfect silence, save now and then
when the driver would whistle a few bars of some very dismal tune that