“All right, I’ll be the audience,” Jerry promised, “but the rabbit’s mine.”

“Then go in the house and put away your cap an’ coat an’ mittens, so’s mother won’t suspect nothin’.  An’, Chris, don’t you dare ever tell, nor you, Nora, nor you, Celia Jane.  I’ll get even with you if it takes to my last livin’ day if you do.”

“We won’t ever tell,” his brother and sisters assured him.

Jerry flew back to the house, and put away his winter clothes and the cloth dog Kathleen had given him, and then dashed out to the circus ground and climbed upon an old barrel which Danny and Chris had turned upside down for a seat.  He kicked his heels against its sides and whistled as best he could as a sign of the audience’s impatience for the circus to begin.

“We’ll begin all over again,” announced Danny and marshaled his three fellow performers back to the woodshed and led them forth in parade to the strains of “I Went to the Animal Fair.”  Jerry duly applauded the parade and waited for the real performance.

Then the green elephant rose up on his hind legs and with one front leg pushed his trunk to one side while the voice of Danny Mullarkey announced, “Ladies and gents, I’m pleased to make you acquainted with Flora, the lady tight-rope walker, who will now walk the tight rope for you an’ I hope you’ll like her.”

This time, by dragging one end of her balancing pole on the ground as she walked forward on the rope, Nora, or, as the circus-master called her, Flora, managed to walk the ten feet to the opposite post without falling off.

Jerry, rejoicing over the possession of the white rabbit, applauded her generously.

“The el’funt will now jump the fence,” came the voice of Danny, issuing from the mouth of the green elephant.  “Hey, you kids!  Get the boards for the fence,” he called to Chris and Celia Jane, who had sat down on the ground while Nora walked the rope.

With a front foot, the elephant put his trunk in place and took a curious little huddled run on all fours up to the very low fence made of two boards, together not more than ten inches high, which Chris and Celia Jane held for him, and then half rose on his hind legs and leaped over the fence, palm-leaf-fan-ears flopping and brown trunk and blue tail wobbling.  No elephant jumping up into the sky and balancing the moon on the end of his trunk was this, truly, but, Jerry thrilled at the first jump, imagining what it might have been.

“Whee!” trumpeted the elephant as he turned back and jumped the fence again.  He seemed to develop a very passion for wheeing and jumping the fence, returning to the charge again and again.

Jerry clapped his hands and kicked the sides of the barrel in approval and laughed at the ungainly antics of the jumping elephant, but by dint of the frequent repetition of the jumping he began to become disappointed that Danny didn’t jump higher.  He grew tired of the performance before Danny wearied of jumping the fence.