CHAPTER XXVI
WE SAY GOODBYE TO DIGGELDY DAN
Stop! Stop! Thumb-bobs and tack hammers, what a collection of questions!
“But how is one to know when there are no more pages that tell?” you persist.
How, indeed! And yet there is a way. For one may always summon those two marvelous playfellows, Guess and Suppose, and with them seek out even Diggeldy Dan. And, having caught up with him, you’ll find the blue-eyed one, too; and (like as not) Lion, and Monkey, and Tiger, and Seal, and the rest of the whole merry crew. For none of them is ever a great ways away,—at least no farther than the circus is near.
“But,” you enquire, after considering this plan for a minute or more, “will they talk to me when once I do find them?”
Perhaps. And yet you must not be sad if they will not. Instead, you should recall what Gray Ears once said in speaking to Dan. “Unless I am away from the circus, I rarely talk to any one,” he warned. “Indeed you might spend months upon months with the Very Biggest Circus and yet never hear one of its animals utter so much as a word.”
- Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
- Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.