The blow stunned the boy.  He saw the visions of two weeks burst like bubbles, and he whimpered:  “I dunno.”  But in his heart he did know that to deny a boy the joy of seeing Willie Sells on his three Shetland ponies, for nothing in the world but showing a North-ender his place, was a piece of injustice of the kind for which men and nations go to war.  At breakfast Bud kept his eyes on his plate.  His face wore the resigned look of a martyr.  Miss Morgan was studiously gracious.  He dropped leaden monosyllables into the cheery flow of her conversation, and after breakfast put in his time at the woodshed.

At eight o’clock that morning the town of Willow Creek was in the thrall of the circus.  Country wagons were passing on every side street.  Delivery carts were rattling about with unusual alacrity.  By half-past nine dressed-up children were flitting along the side streets hurrying their seniors.  On the main thoroughfare flags were flying, and the streams of strangers that had been flowing into town were eddying at the street corners.  The balloon-vender wormed his way through the buzzing crowd, leaving his wares in a red and blue trail behind him.  The bark of the fakir rasped the tightening nerves of the town.  Everywhere was hubbub; everywhere was the dusty, heated air of the festival; everywhere were men and women ready for the marvel that had come out of the great world, bringing pomp and circumstance in its gilded train; everywhere in Willow Creek the spirit which put the blue sash about the country girl’s waist and the flag in her beau’s hat ran riot, save at the home of Miss Morgan.  There the bees hummed lazily over the old-fashioned flower garden; there the cantankerous jays jabbered in the cottonwoods; there the muffled noises of the town festival came as from afar; there Miss Morgan puttered about her morning’s work, trying vainly to croon a gospel hymn; and there Bud Perkins, prone upon the sitting-room sofa, made parallelograms and squares and diamonds with the dots and lines on the ceiling paper.  When the throb of the drum and the blare of the brass had set the heart of the town to dancing, some wave of the ecstasy seeped through the lilac bushes and into the quiet house.  The boy on the sofa started up suddenly, checked himself ostentatiously, walked to the bird cage, and began to play with the canary.  The wave carried the little spinster to the window.  The circus had a homestead in human hearts before John Wesley staked his claim, and even so good a Methodist as Miss Morgan could not be deaf to the scream of the calliope nor the tinkle of cymbals.

[Illustration:  Dressed-up children were flitting along the side streets, hurrying their seniors.]

[Illustration:  The Balloon-Vender wormed his way through the buzzing crowd, leaving his wares in a red and blue trail behind him.]

[Illustration:  The Blue Sash about the country girl’s waist and the flag in her Beau’s hat.]