.

MORNING: "SOME IN RAGS AND SOME IN TAGS AND SOME IN VELVET.
GOWNS" The bright sun of circus-day shone into Harkless's window, and he awoke to find himself smiling.

For a little while he lay content, drowsily wondering why he smiled, only knowing that there was something new.
It was thus, as a boy, he had wakened on his birthday mornings, or on Christmas, or on the Fourth of July, drifting happily out of pleasant dreams into the consciousness of long-awaited delights that had come true, yet lying only half-awake in a cheerful borderland, leaving happiness undefined.
The morning breeze was fluttering at his window blind; a honeysuckle vine tapped lightly on the pane.

Birds were trilling, warbling, whistling.

From the street came the rumbling of wagons, merry cries of greeting, and the barking of dogs.