The door seemed to be made in halves, and whilst the lower part was shut the upper part was open. Through this Jimmy could see inside the van, and it looked exactly like a small room, only rather dirty and untidy.
As Jimmy stood on the steps staring into the van, with the clown close behind him, a girl came out from what seemed to be a second room behind the first. She had yellow hair, and her face looked very white; but although she must have changed her dress, Jimmy felt certain she was the same girl who had worn the green velvet riding-habit.
"Hullo!" she cried, seeing Jimmy, but not seeing her father. "What do you want?"
"All right, Nan, all right," said the clown, and he put an arm in front of Jimmy to push open the door. Whilst Jimmy felt glad to find shelter from the rain, the clown went to the back room, which must have been extremely small, and carried on a conversation with the girl whom he called Nan. Jimmy felt certain he was telling her all about himself.
Presently they both came out again, and Nan went to a shelf and brought some rather fat bacon and bread, and a knife and fork with black handles. There were two beds--one in the back part of the van and one in the front. Jimmy sat down on the one in the front to eat his supper, and before he had finished Nan gave him a mug of tea, which made him feel much warmer, although it did not taste very pleasant.
The clown had gone away again, and Jimmy wondered why there was such a noise outside the van.
"They"re only putting the horses in," said Nan, when he questioned her.
"I should have thought they would be taking them out at this time of night," answered Jimmy.
"We always travel at night," she explained, "and then we"re ready for the performance in the daytime."
"But when do you go to sleep?" asked Jimmy.
"When we get a chance," she said. "But the best thing you can do"s to go to sleep now. Suppose you lie down in there," and she pointed to the room which was boarded off behind.
"Whose bed is it?" he asked.
"Father"s, when he gets time to lie in it," was the answer.
"But he can"t if I"m there," said Jimmy.
"He"s got a lot to do before he thinks of bed," exclaimed Nan. "He"s got to see to the horses. But I"ll lie down as soon as we start, and presently father and I"ll change places."
CHAPTER X
ON THE ROAD
It all seemed very strange to Jimmy, and he would not have felt very much surprised if he had suddenly awakened to find himself back in the dormitory at Miss Lawson"s, and all his adventures a dream.
The bed did not look very clean, and Jimmy thought at first that he should not care to lie down on it. He felt too tired to waste much time, however, and he did not even take off his clothes, but lay down just as he was, and in half a minute he fell fast asleep.
And though the horse was put between the shafts, and there was a loud shouting as the long line of carts and vans began to move, Jimmy did not open his eyes for some time.
He might not have opened them even then if Nan, who had also been asleep, had not risen and opened the door and let in a whiff of cold air. As Jimmy sat up in the dark and rubbed his eyes, he thought at first that he must be in a boat, because whatever he might be in, it rolled about from side to side. Remembering presently where he really was, he got off the bed, and peeped into the other half of the van.
Seeing that Nan was not there, he went to the door, the upper half of which she had left open. The rain had quite left off, and the night was very beautiful. A great many stars shone in the sky; Jimmy had never looked out so late before, he had never seen the heavens such a dark blue nor the stars so large and bright. It was four o"clock in the morning, the air felt very cold, and he could see that they were going slowly along a country road.
About a yard from the back of his own van, a grey horse jogged along between the shafts of another van, with a rough brown pony tied beside it. Feeling curious to see as much as he could, Jimmy opened the door, and climbed carefully down the steps. Then he ran to the side of the road, although he always took care to keep close to the clown"s van.
In front he saw ever so many carts and vans, and behind there were as many more. There were horses in groups of five or six, and men walking sleepily along by the hedge. Now and then the lion roared, but not very loudly; now and then one of the men spoke to his horses; now and then a match was struck to light a pipe. But for the most part it seemed strangely silent as the long line wound slowly along the country road.
For a good while Jimmy scarcely heard a sound, but presently, after he had been in the road a few minutes, he did hear something, and that was the clown"s voice.
"Hullo," it said, "what are you doing out here? Just you get inside again"; and Jimmy scampered away and ran up the steps and lay down on the bed. He was soon asleep again, and when he re-opened his eyes it was broad daylight. He found that the caravan had come to a standstill, but when he looked out at the door everything seemed as quiet as when they were on the march. It was not so quiet inside the house, for the clown lay on the bed which Nan had occupied earlier, and he was snoring loudly. Jimmy wondered where Nan had gone, but whilst he stood shivering by the door he saw her carrying a wooden pail full of water.
"Is that for me to wash in?" asked Jimmy, for he was surprised to find that there were no basins and towels in the van.
"Not it," answered Nan. "That"s to make some tea for breakfast." He watched whilst she brought out three pieces of iron like walking-sticks, tied together at the ends and forming a tripod. Having stuck the other ends in the ground, Nan collected some sticks, and heaping these together, she soon made a good fire.
"Can I warm my hands?" asked Jimmy; and leaving the van, he crouched down to hold his small hands over the blaze. Then Nan hung a kettle over the fire and stood watching whilst it boiled. And men and women gradually came out of the other vans, which stood about anyhow, and they all looked very sleepy and rather dirty, especially the children who soon began to collect round Jimmy as if he were the most extraordinary thing in the caravan. If he had felt less cold and hungry Jimmy might have enjoyed it all, for there was certainly a great deal to see.
They seemed to have stopped on another common, but there were small houses not very far away. The worst of it was that wherever he went he was followed by a small crowd of children who made loud remarks about him. Still he wandered in and out amongst the vans, and stopped a long time before the cage which contained the lion. The lion was lying down licking his fore-paws, but he left off to stare at Jimmy, who quickly drew farther away from the cage. A little farther he met two elephants, a big one and a little one, with three men who were taking them down to a pond to drink. Jimmy saw some comical-looking monkeys too; and what interested him almost more than anything were the men who had already begun to fix the large tent in an open s.p.a.ce. It looked rather odd at present, because they had only fixed the centre pole, and the canvas hung loosely in the shape of the cap which the clown had worn last night. On returning to the van, still followed by the boys, Jimmy saw the clown sitting on the steps eating an enormous piece of bread and cheese, and drinking hot tea out of a mug.
"Come along," said the clown, "come and have some breakfast"; and Jimmy sat down on the muddy ground, and Nan gave him another mug and a thick slice of bread; but Jimmy was by this time so hungry that he could have eaten anything. Still he felt very anxious to hear how he was to reach Chesterham without meeting Coote again.
"I _should_ like to see my father and mother to-day," he said, as he ate his breakfast.
"Not to-day," answered the clown, "but it won"t be long, so don"t you worry yourself. We"re working that way, and we"re going to have a performance there."
"At Chesterham!" cried Jimmy, feeling extremely relieved.
"You"ll be there before the end of the week," said the clown; "and I should think your father would come down handsome."
Now Jimmy began to feel quite contented again, and there was so much to look at that he forgot everything else.
When he was at school at Ramsgate he had seen a circus going in a procession through the town, and now Nan told him that this circus was going in a procession, and that it would start at half-past twelve.
Everybody seemed very busy making ready for it, men were attending to the horses, and the gilded chariots were being prepared, and presently Nan began to dress.
"What are you going to be?" asked Jimmy, as she took a bright-looking helmet from under her bed.
"Don"t you know?" she answered. "Why, I"m Britannia."
A little later she left the van with the helmet on her head, and a large thing which looked like a pitchfork in one hand. In the other she carried a shield, and her white dress had flags all over it. By this time one of the gilded chariots had been made very high; it seemed to be almost as high as a house, and on the top was a seat. Nan climbed up to this seat and sat down, and then a black man led Billy the lion out of his cage with a chain round his neck, and it was funny to see the lion climb up to the place where Nan was sitting and quietly lie down by her side.
The clown was standing on a white horse, with a long pair of reins driving another white horse; but the black man who had led the lion drove eight horses, and then there was a band, in red, and two elephants, and everybody in the circus except some of the children and a few women formed a part of the long procession.
CHAPTER XI
JIMMY RUNS AWAY AGAIN
Now, Jimmy thought that he also would like to be in the procession. He would have liked to dress up as Nan had done, although perhaps he would not have cared to sit quite so close to the lion. They seemed to have forgotten all about him, and he was left to do just as he liked. So what he did was to walk beside the procession into the town, and then to run on ahead to find a good place to see it pa.s.s.
He got back to the van long before Nan and her father, and being quite alone, he began to look about him. Hanging on a peg, he saw a lot of old clothes, which seemed rather interesting, especially one suit that must have belonged to the little clown.
Jimmy looked at the dress again and again. There were long things like socks, of a dirty white colour, with a kind of flowery pattern in red along the sides. Then he saw what looked like a very short and baggy pair of light red and blue knickerbockers, and also the jacket of light red and blue too, with curious loose sleeves.
He would very much have liked to put them all on just to see how he looked in them, only that he felt afraid that Nan or her father might return before he had time to take them off again.