Music began to fill the front of the inn as soon as they left the dining room. The sound of horses and wagons and other sounds she’d never heard before became louder and louder.
“What is it?” Jennifer asked, eyes widening by the second.
“I have no idea,” Regan replied.
The front of the hotel was plastered with people, all frozen in their places at the six windows in front and the open door.
“Jennifer!” someone yelled, and all the people suddenly came alive.
“It’s a circus!”
“And a menagerie! I saw one in Philadelphia once.”
Jennifer’s name was repeated several times before Regan could make a place for herself and her daughter on the front porch.
Just rounding the corner by the schoolhouse were three men, their faces painted, wearing satin clothes sewn with spots and stripes of outrageous colors, and they were doing flips, tumbling, jumping over each other.
Something on their chests seemed to be letters. It took Regan a while to make out the word because of the clowns’ acrobatics.
“Jennifer,” she said. “It says Jennifer.”
Laughing, grabbing her daughter in her arms, she pointed excitedly. “It’s for you! They’re clowns, and they have Jennifer, your name, written on their suits.”
“They’re for me?”
“Yes, yes, yes! Your Daddy has sent you a whole circus, and if I know Travis, it’s no little circus. Look! Here come some men doing tricks on horses.”
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More than a little stunned, Jennifer watched as three horses, beautiful, golden, long-maned horses, came galloping toward them, a man in each saddle, one standing up, another jumping in and out of the saddle, his feet barely touching the ground, and the last man’s horse seemed to be dancing. As a body, they stopped in the midst of a storm of dust and saluted Jennifer. Grinning almost enough to tear her skin, she looked at her mother.
“The circus is for me,” she said proudly, turning away to look at the other people beside her. “My Daddy sent a circus for me.”
A stilt-walker followed the clowns and equestrians, and then came a man pulling a small black bear on a chain. Everything had Jennifer’s name written on it. The music was growing louder as the band came closer to the inn.
Suddenly a hush fell over all the townspeople as around the corner came the biggest, most bizarre creature anyone had ever seen. Lumbering slowly, its massive feet making the ground quake, the animal with its trainer leading it stopped before the inn. The man unfurled a sign down the animal’s side: “Capt. John Crowinshield presents the first elephant to appear in these United States of America. And at a special request of Mr. Travis Stanford, this great beast will perform for—.”
Regan read the sign to her daughter, who was clinging tightly to her mother.
“For Jennifer!” a second sign heralded.
“What do you think of that?” Regan asked. “Daddy sent the elephant to perform just for you.”
For a moment Jennifer didn’t answer, but after a long pause she leaned toward her mother’s ear. “I don’t have to keep him, do I?” she whispered.
Regan wanted to laugh, but the more she thought of her daughter’s question and Travis’s sense of humor…. “I sincerely, truly hope not,” she said.
Thoughts of the elephant vanished as soon as it moved away, because behind the animal was a pretty little white pony covered with a blanket of white roses with “Jennifer” spelled out in red roses.
“What does it say, Mommie?” Jennifer asked with hope in her voice. “Is the pony for me?”
“It certainly is,” said a pretty blonde woman in a revealing—scandalous actually—costume of stretchy cotton. “Your Daddy found you the sweetest, gentlest horse in this state, and if you like you can ride him in the parade.”
“Could I? Please?”
“I’ll take care of her,” the woman said. “And Travis is on the grounds.”
Reluctantly, Regan relinquished her daughter and watched as the woman lifted the child into the saddle. From the side of the pony, the woman took a vest completely covered in pink roses and slipped Jennifer’s arms through it.