And Tip's face, as he walked towards the village ten minutes after that,
was a study, it looked so full of trouble.

Kitty wanted to go to that circus,--wanted to go so very much that she
had coaxed and begged him in a way that she had never done before.
Besides, if the truth be told, Tip wanted to go himself; every time the
wind wafted back to him a swell of the distant music, it made his heart
fairly jump. It was true, as Kitty had said, he always managed to slip in
some way; and the oftener he went, the oftener he wanted to go.

Well, then, what was the matter with Tip? What he had done so many times
before, he could surely find a way to do again. Oh yes! But Tip Lewis
to-day was different from any Tip Lewis there had ever been before on
circus day. Wasn't he trying to do right? But then, what had circuses to
do with that? He tried to think what were his reasons for being troubled!
Why did a small voice down in his heart keep telling him that the circus
was no place for him now?

Looking at the matter steadily, the only reason Tip knew was, that Ellis
Holbrook and Howard Minturn never went; their fathers had taught them
differently. Ellis, he knew, rather looked down on people who did
go,--called them low. This had never troubled Tip before, because he had
always known himself to be low; but now, wasn't he trying to climb?
Didn't respectable people generally think that circuses were bad things?

No, poor Tip, they didn't; there was Mr. Bailey, a rich man,--so rich
and so respectable that his son wouldn't stoop to lend Tip his
spelling-book at school,--yet Mr. Bailey went to the circus last year and
took all his children. So did Mr. Anderson and Mr. Stone, and oh! dozens