"Bet you wouldn't let me put any of that glass you're eatin' in my coffee," he guffawed to the ostrich man whom Gus, the barker, was ballyhooing at the moment. "I'm on to all you guys. Rock candy, ain't it?"
"Sure, officer," Gus interrupted his spiel to answer deferentially. "Won't you have a little snack with the human ostrich? I particularly recommend these nails. Boffo eats only the choicest sixpenny nails; will accept no substitutes. And if a nail's rusty, out with it! Sort of an epicure, Boffo is! Have a handful of glass and nails with Boffo, officer! Bighearted, that Boffo!"
The constable refused hastily and the crowd roared with delight. The discomfited officer of the law ambled over to make his disparaging inspection of Jan, the giant from Holland.
"Pull up your pants legs and let me see your stilts," the constable ordered authoritatively. "I ain't the sucker you guys think I am. I'm on to your tricks--been going to carnivals man and boy for fifty years."
With his eyes as remote and sad and patient as if he had not heard or understood a word of the constable's insult, Jan obeyed, rolling his trousers to the knees. When the Doubting Thomas representative of the law had pinched the pale, putty-colored flesh of Jan's pitifully thin calves and found them to be flesh-and-blood indeed, he passed on, red of face, furious at the snorts of laughter which filled the tent.
"What if he takes a notion to wash my face?" Sally shivered, bending low, in an attitude of mystic concentration, over the crystal which she was pretending to read for a farmer's wife who had no interest in Boffo, the human ostrich, but who did have perfect faith in the powers of "Princess Lalla." "What if he is just pretending to be interested in the other freaks and is really looking for me? Has Nita dared to tip him off that Sally Ford is here?"
But her little sing-song voice droned on, predicting prosperity and happiness and "a journey by land and sea" for the credulous farmer's wife.
"What's your real name, sister?" the constable demanded loudly, officiously, stamping up the steps that led to the little platform.
"Please," Sally pleaded prettily, making her eyes wide and cloudy with mystic visions, "do not een-terr-upt! The veesion she will go away!"