When the parade was over, Jerry and the Mullarkey children, together
with a hundred or more small boys and girls, followed the steam-throated
calliope through the principal street of the town out to the tents,
fascinated by the loudness of the music and the escape of jets of steam
as the player fingered the keys. It seemed to Jerry that there couldn't
in all the wide world be such heavenly music. Celia Jane and Chris
shared his enthusiasm, but Nora confessed to liking a fiddle better and
Danny asserted that the music of the trombone was easier on the ears.
The free exhibition on the little platform outside the side-show tent
had all the fascination of the unknown for Jerry and Chris and Celia
Jane and Nora, but not for Danny, who had been to the vaudeville theater
twice and who knew that this outside sample never could come up to the
glories to be revealed inside for fifty cents, or a dollar and a half
for reserved seats in the boxes, and was critical.
The dancing girl in short skirts and the man with the beard which fell
to his feet and the very red-faced snake charmer merely whetted his
appetite for what was to come, while to Jerry and the rest of the
Mullarkey children it was a substantial part of the feast itself.
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