If I Were You Read Online Free PDF Page B

her aged face and he welcomed it. “Things have been like this for the whole season without our getting anything but poorer. Have you some good news of some sort?”
    “Ah . . . well . . . you never can tell,” he said vaguely.
    “You’re holding something back!” said Mrs. Johnson with a kittenish air which accused him of teasing her.
    Tommy regretted he had brought the matter to the front. “No. Honest, I didn’t mean anything. It’s just going to be a good day, I guess. Maybe,” he added brightly, “maybe I better be getting over to the big top to make sure everything is going all right.”
    She looked startled, but he moved away too fast to be stopped.
    “Hmm,” said Mrs. Johnson suspiciously.
    Tommy felt unsettled. He ran a clammy hand over the unaccustomed bushiness of his physiognomy . In the protection of a snack stand, he seated himself upon a box and tried to collect his thoughts. The things he had begun to find out about Hermann Schmidt were not at all quieting, and though he had already begun to regret his swap, there was still too much glamour in the thought of being a ringmaster not to give the thing a thorough try. After all, he could last long enough to crack his whip in the main event, and after that he could let fate take its course.
    Mealtime had robbed the lot of its attendants for the moment and so he sat on, waiting for something else to happen. For thought food, he used the fact that the attendants had been getting thin. That had been news, for pay had been regular enough. It amused him the next moment to think that he—Schmidt—would be the one to know the most about such affairs.
    Presently the lot began to be popular once more and, feeling conspicuous, he started to move off, wondering where he should go, until it occurred to him that the white wagon , after all, was his. However, his few minutes of rest had spotted him, and promptly he was surrounded by men who had problems to be solved.
    Although he had the routine of sawdust land at his fingertips, it made him very uncomfortable to be called upon for so many decisions at once. Joe Middler was taking too much “ strawberry shortcake .” His shill wasn’t getting a long enough string of coconuts . The pup opera was minus its canine star, who had wandered too near a gravedigger ’s cage, and it was either a new mutt or a dead hyena. The payoff was too high on a juice joint , and if John Law objected to the kife , what else could a guy do but howl? A kinker had a twisted wrist, and he figured Bill had had it in for ’im anyway since that dame in St. Looie had shown good sense, and he wasn’t goin’ to get a broken neck over any fool dame!
    Tommy dispensed justice as best he could, and twice he turned down out-and-out bribes for a decision, much to the astonishment of the would-be bribers.
    When things were at last settled and the show was in order, spots had begun and the place was humming with thistle chins . The spielers were clowning the come-in to what appeared to be a great crowd. People from far and near were already milling near the marquee and, all in all, it was a bright, hot, sweaty, dusty circus day, with bawling barkers all snarled up with the yelping horse piano and the jig band, and the constant hum of pleased suckers, with an undertone of lions’ roars and clacking wheels.
    Tommy felt better. This was his element, and of this element he was now king. So delighted was he at the thought of at last snapping the lash in the hoople to the admiration of all, that he quite forgot to think at all of what was happening to himself, erstwhile Little Tommy Little, now Hermann Schmidt—in the flesh at least.
     
    B ut Schmidt had not forgotten anything, even in the soul-shattering experience of all of a sudden watching himself flick his crop and walk away, leaving behind a man less than thirty inches high.
    Schmidt’s first impulse had been to dash after himself, crying out for help. But his coldly logical brain had told him