If I Were You Read Online Free PDF Page A

she could only nod a weary assent.
    And, leaving his wagon after she had gone, Hermann Schmidt appeared a match for more than a dozen mere lion trainers. An aloof demigod, secure in his realm, proud of his abilities and cunning, he passed the sideshow—with no eyes at all for the midget who stood there, apparently waiting for someone.
    Little Tom Little was so filled with excitement that he found great difficulty in breathing. To him, Schmidt was a Brobdingnagian , a Zeus and a Colossus of Rhodes all superadded into one, and when, in this breath before the zero minute, he contemplated what he was about to do, he was flabbergasted by his own temerity.
    Certain he was that Schmidt knew all about it and was about to break his crop on Tommy’s small skull. For there he came, as though riding the Juggernaut car , gigantic and unstoppable, the science of black magic to the contrary.
    But so fascinated had Tommy been since the instant of conceiving this bold plan that any passing doubt was drowned in a torrent of enthusiasm.
    He must time this to the split instant. He must not forget those words which seared his brain.
    Eagerly he sought Schmidt’s eye.
    Proud to bursting of both his height and bearing, Schmidt was unable to brook even a glimpse of a midget. But eyes are traitorous things which follow anything that moves or sparkles, and as a last resort, Tommy had armed himself with a small silver whip. He swooshed it viciously through the air. Schmidt glanced that way, instantly revolted by the midget’s image.
    To a razorback who stood languidly by, what followed was not particularly startling, not even to be suspected. For Schmidt merely stopped where he was and appeared to be offended, which was not unusual. Little Tom Little was apparently eagerly seeking to say something to the ringmaster. But the two did not exchange a word. The midget’s mouth moved as though he talked to himself, and Schmidt looked popeyed at such effrontery and, immediately after, somewhat blank. This was the only thing that the razorback remarked. Schmidt had never looked anything but severe in all circus knowledge. But after an instant of this, Schmidt—getting a grip on himself, it seemed—glanced down to take delighted inventory of his dress. And Little Tom Little, so it appeared, was nothing but disturbed by his own garb. Thereupon Schmidt, swinging his crop and again in a grandiose humor, strolled on his way, and the midget, starting to run after, noticed the razorback and moved wonderingly into the shadow of the deserted sideshow tent. . . .
     
    A fter the first shock of the transition was over, Little Tom Little felt very much like a bean in a bass drum. When he took a step, he went about four times as far as he thought he should have gone, a fact which occasioned his stumbling over a guy rope and almost losing his dignity in the lap of Matilda, the World’s Fattest Woman. He bowed with great difficulty and again misgauged his distance, almost knocking out his brains against a wagon side, so much further had he gone than he had expected.
    Feeling embarrassed, he made off. Every day for years he had seen Matilda, and always she had reserved a large smile for him and perhaps some cookies—quite as though she mistook him for a mischievous little boy. And though always he had resented being looked on as a boy, he had never failed to enjoy either the cookies or the smile. But now Matilda looked sober and alarmed, and she had not spoken a word.
    It was uncomfortable to feel, suddenly, that he was outside the scope of her kindness. And when he came to consider it, he realized that people were not unkind to him—had never been truly unkind to Little Tom Little.
    Well! He was not Little Tom Little anymore. He was Hermann Schmidt, the World’s Greatest Ringmaster, Lord and Master of Johnson’s Super Shows. And what if he did underestimate the length of his step and knock his hat against things he had always found far above him—he would get