THE SIDE SHOWS
"It's out!" screamed the woman. "Oh-oh! It's out and it's got me! Save
me! Save me!"
As Polly told her mother later it was "creepy" to hear these screams in
the darkness of the tent, and a dozen voices began to ask:
"What is it? What's the matter?"
The snake charmer, who had been behind the scenes of the tiny stage,
came out in her beautiful pink velvet dress and spoke calmly.
"What is it, lady?" she called clearly. "What is the matter with you?"
"There it is again!" shrieked the woman. "It's the boa constrictor! I
can feel it creeping over my feet!"
My goodness, that was enough to make any one nervous! Two or three more
people began to cry that they, too, could feel the boa constrictor
crawling over their feet on the floor of the tent.
There might have been a panic in another minute, but a carnival
attendant who had heard the racket came pushing his way through the
crowd of people, a powerful flashlight in his hand.
"What's the matter here?" he kept asking. "What's wrong? Hey, madam,
keep still and tell me what's bothering you."
"A snake!" gasped the woman. "There! There! Get him, quick!"
Polly and Margy were holding hands tightly and Jess had a desperate
clutch on Polly's skirt. Fred and Artie were close by. All leaned
forward as the attendant swept the floor with his light.
Then every one began to laugh and the tent resounded to the sound of
relief. There in the glare of the light, flat on his stomach, was Ward,
his hair sticking straight up, his face red with the heat and his
exertions, and the precious pass gripped tightly in his right hand.
"I got it!" he beamed. "Somebody stepped on it, but I found it all
right."
"My land, was it you crawling around in the dark?" the woman who had
begun the screaming asked in amazement. "Don't you know any better than
to scare folks out of their wits?"
"Ladies and gentlemen," began the snake charmer diplomatically, "now
that your fears have been proved groundless, may I ask for your
kindest attention? I want to present to you Richard the Third, the
noblest snake----"
She began to fondle and exhibit her snakes and the crowd pressed
closer. Ward made all haste to get further away from the woman who had
been frightened. He was afraid she might begin to scold again, but she
was too interested in the snake charmer to remember her fright.
The Riddle Club stayed till the last snake had been put back in its box
and then came out, the strong sunlight making their eyes blink after
the darkness.
"Say, this is your unlucky day all right, Ward," said the grinning
Fred. "First your pass is no good for peanuts and then you give the
whole snake show a regular fit. Now here's the fat boy. We'll go see
him, and if he takes you for his brother, don't blame me."
Ward _was_ fat, there was no denying the fact. But he was not as fat
as the lad they found propped up in a red velvet chair on a little red
velvet platform. This boy looked as though he might be ten or twelve
years old, but he was fatter than Mr. Higsby, the fattest man in River
Bend.
"Willis King, the fattest boy for his age in the world," read Artie.
"Sh! That isn't polite," Polly reproved him. "You'll hurt his feelings."
"No, he won't. I'm used to that," the fat boy answered, for he had
overheard. "I know I'm fat, and I don't mind if people do say so."
Ward silently handed him the bag of peanuts, and he took a handful.
"I should think you'd like to travel around," said Artie. "It must be
fun to see all the different places and people."
"Do you have to go to school?" Ward asked.
"Can't--I'm too fat," said the boy. "I'd break down all the benches. My
mother teaches me. And let me tell you, it isn't such fun going around,
especially in hot weather. I'd like to spend a summer at the beach and
just have a good time."
"Why don't you?" Margy asked.
"Because I have to work," the fat boy replied. "This is work, though
you may not know it. I have to sit up here and have people look at me
and the lights make it awful hot at night. Then going on trains and
boats is tiresome. You don't know how lucky you are, to stay in one
place all summer."
"How did you get fat?" asked Jess, determined to prevent Ward from
gaining another pound.
"I was born fat," was the answer. "And then I eat lots of food and
don't exercise. Now I try not to get thin, because I expect to earn my
living this way, and if I was thin, I couldn't be an exhibit."
He ate three more peanuts as though he feared he might have lost some
weight through the exertion of talking.
"I don't think he is very bright," commented Jess, as they left the
tent. "First he says it is no fun to be fat and then he says he wants
to stay fat so he can be an exhibit."
"Well, I don't suppose he'd ever be real thin, and if he is going to be
fat, he thinks he'd better be fatter than any one else," Polly said.
"Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well, Mrs. Pepper says."
The others laughed and Ward asked anxiously if they thought he would
ever be an exhibit.
"You'd better be careful," said Jess.
"And whatever you do," added Fred, "stop when you have had two helpings
of dessert. It is the third time that will put you in the freak class,
Ward."
"Mother hardly ever lets me have even two helpings," Ward murmured. He
would take Fred's teasing seriously nearly every time.
There were a few more sights, not many, for the carnival was a small
one, and when they had been into every tent they went back to the
benches where the three mothers were waiting.
"We thought we wouldn't have ice cream till you came," said Mrs.
Marley, "but we are glad we don't have to wait any longer. Who knows
where we can find something cool to eat and drink?"
The children had passed a refreshment pavilion and they led the way
back to this. Here they had ice cream and rice waffles, and then it was
time to think of starting for home.
As they were standing at the side of the road, waiting for the bus, Joe
Anderson and Albert Holmes came up the road. They had walked from the
bungalow colony and they looked warm and dusty.
"We've seen everything," Artie told them as soon as the two boys were
within hearing distance. "Margy found a diamond ring and we had passes
and saw everything free."
Joe and Albert stared open-mouthed and the members of the Riddle Club
were obliged to explain.
"Gee, what did you do with the passes?" asked Joe quickly. "Perhaps we
could use them."
"We gave them back to the manager. Mother said to," Margy told him.
"I don't see why you did that. We could have had a good time with
them to-night, and maybe you could have used them again to-morrow,"
said Joe, looking much put out, as though Margy had acted very
inconsiderately.
"Mother said we couldn't come again, and anyway the carnival won't be
here long," Fred announced.
"And the man meant us to go in just once, I think," said Polly slowly.
"It wouldn't be fair for everybody to use the passes and see the
carnival free."
"Just the same, I think you might have let us have 'em," grumbled Joe.
The bus came along just then, and the Riddle Club members followed
their mothers, leaving Joe and Albert to go on to the Carnival and make
the most of their nickels.
"I don't believe he liked it because we gave the passes back," said
Margy, finding a seat between Jess and Ward.
"Who? Joe? Don't let that worry you," Fred counseled. "I'm glad you
didn't have a pass to give him; he would have thought he owned the
show."
"The hundred dollars would have been nice in the bank account, wouldn't
it?" Margy suggested, with a little sigh.
Now, Margy was not the only one who had had that idea, and Mrs.
Williamson had talked to Fred about it at some length while they waited
for the bus. Fred was club treasurer and very proud of the bank account
opened in the name of the Riddle Club. Mrs. Williamson had been afraid
that he would regret the hundred dollars Margy might have taken for
finding the ring.
"Mother said," Fred reported, "that she hopes we'll never take money
when we haven't done anything to earn it. She said it is all right to
offer rewards and to accept them, if we really do something. If Margy
had heard about the ring being lost and she had gone out and hunted and
walked miles and worked her head off and then found it, it wouldn't
be so bad to take the money. But Mother says all she did was to put
her hand down in the crack and pull out the ring. If she kept it, that
would be stealing. But if she took it back and took the hundred dollars
that would be almost like paying her for _not_ stealing. You have to
really earn a reward."
"But we'll not ever have a chance to get a hundred dollar reward
again," sighed Jess.
"How do you know?" Polly challenged. "I'm going to have good fortune
all my life--my hand says so. Maybe I'll get a hundred dollars reward
for doing something wonderful."
"Will you put it in the club fund?" asked Jess, and Polly promised
that the money should go in the bank and be credited to the Riddle Club.
All were tired after their strenuous day, and there were no protests
when Mrs. Marley suggested that every one go to bed at eight o'clock.
Waking up at his usual hour the next morning, Fred discovered that
Artie was not in the room.
"He's dressed and gone out," said Fred in surprise, noting that Artie's
shoes were not under the chair where he always left them and that his
clothes had disappeared.
Fred made haste to get downstairs and found that Artie was not in the
house. The sound of hammering drew him to the barn. There was only one
car in it now, of course, since one was in River Bend whither it had
carried the three fathers.
"What do you call it you're doing?" asked Fred, peering in at the door.
The hammering stopped. Artie was working in the darkest corner.
"I'm building a raft," he announced coolly. "I want to get it done
before Daddy comes to-morrow night."
"Why don't you build it somewhere near the water?" Fred asked. "I
should think you'd know it has to be carried down somehow."
"Well, I guess a horse can pull it, can't he?" said Artie. "Lots of
boats are built where there isn't any water. I've seen them on freight
cars."
So had Fred. But his common sense told him that when one lived almost
across the street from the ocean, the beach was the place to construct
a raft.
"Where did you get your hammer and nails, Artie?" he asked curiously.
"And the boards? It must take heavy boards to build a raft."
"They're already nailed together," Artie informed him. "I only have to
put on a couple of cross-pieces and it will be done."
"But I think you're an awful chump to build it in the barn," persisted
Fred. "You can't see in that dark corner, either. And why get up in the
middle of the night to build a raft?"
"It isn't the middle of the night," Artie argued. "Besides, I want to
try to sail it before breakfast."
Fred suddenly thought of something. He darted out and ran around back
of the barn. Sure enough, his suspicions were correct.
"Come out here a minute, Artie!" he called.