Freddy and the Perilous Adventure by Walter R. Brooks Page A

ran down quickly into the cornfield, and in two minutes the scarecrow was just two sticks and Freddy was a very dressy little man who looked as if he might just have come from a wedding. “I’m sorry to do this,” he said to the sticks, “when somebody has taken so much trouble to fix you up, but I’ll bring everything back tomorrow.” He shook the straw out of the head, and tied the cloth around his neck like a stock, and then he drew on the white cotton gloves, gave the top of his hat a tap to settle it over his ears, picked up the crosspiece for a walking stick, and started down to the road. There was only one thing missing; the shoes. If he met and talked to anybody, he must remember to stand in the grass.
    â€œâ€¦ I’ll bring everything back tomorrow.”
    For a while everything went very nicely. The people he met stared a good deal, and in the one village he passed through, several little boys followed him, making remarks, for as a usual thing, people as fashionably dressed as he was ride in large shiny automobiles, and do not walk along country roads. But he strode along, twirling his stick, and tipping his hat politely to the ladies, and nobody bothered him.
    Now Freddy had never worn a high silk hat before, and he was naturally anxious to know how he looked in it. But there weren’t any plate glass windows in the village, and he couldn’t go up to a house and rap on the door and say: “Please may I admire myself in one of your mirrors?” Yet people were so respectful to him that he thought he must look pretty nice. So a little way past the village he came to a pond, and he went over to it and crouched down at the edge and tried to see himself in the water.
    Well, he bent over too quickly, and the hat fell into the pond. So he fished it out and dried it on the grass, and after the ripples had cleared from the water he tried again. He bent over very slowly, but each time, just before he could tip his head far enough over to see his reflection, the hat began to slip.
    Then he tried holding it on. But the sleeves of the coat were much too long and too wide for him, so that although he could see the reflection of his face, the sleeves fell forward and hid the hat. And at last he gave it up.
    A little farther on he came to a barn, and on the side of the barn was a big poster advertising a circus. It showed lions and tigers and bareback riders and clowns, and in big red letters across the top it said: BOOMSCHMIDT’S COLOSSAL AND UNPARALLELED CIRCUS, and in smaller blue letters at the bottom it said: South Pharisee, Week of July 6th.
    â€œSo that’s the circus the dirty-faced boy was talking about!” said Freddy to himself. “Oh dear, why couldn’t Mr. Boomschmidt have come through here later in the season? If I didn’t have all this balloon business on my hands I could have gone to South Pharisee, wherever it is, and seen the show and had a good time with all my old friends. But I guess it’s out of the question now.” He thought for a minute. “South Pharisee. Wasn’t that the town Breckenridge mentioned, where he thought we might find Uncle Wesley? H’m, that should be looked into.”
    Mr. Boomschmidt, the owner of the circus, was an old friend of Freddy’s, as were many of the animals in his show. Indeed, Freddy had once done him a great service, and as Mr. Boomschmidt was not the man to forget a service, however small, the Bean animals were always sure, not only of free tickets to all performances, but of all the lemonade and popcorn they could hold, whenever the circus came anywhere near Centerboro, as it did about once a year. Freddy was mournfully looking at the poster and picking out the pictures of his friends: Freginald, the bear, and Leo, the lion, and all the others, when a car drew up on the road behind him and a voice said: “Morning, stranger.”
    Freddy knew that voice. It belonged to his friend the