After that we often rode on the cars. We went to a great many different places, and always there was a theatre, and always we went through just the same tricks in just the same way, and there were lights and music, and the people clapped their hands and laughed.
All the while I remembered Tommy, but I didn’t remember him as often as I used to. I was too busy, and then I was tired all the time, too.
After a while we came back home again. We didn’t begin acting right away, though. We practised one or two new tricks. I learned to turn somersaults and to balance a ball on my nose.
Then one night we went to the theatre again. We went quite early that night, and we went by a different way from the way we had gone before. I don’t know why that was. We used to go through a narrow dark street with ash barrels standing in it, and in through the back door of the theatre; but this time we went along a broad bright street where there were crowds of people, and Mr. Bonelli led us in the big front way.
There were big boards standing in the hall of the theatre, with pictures on them,--and one was a picture of _me_! Me, in my clown clothes up on a high stool and grinning. The other dogs were sniffing about and didn’t see it, and I wouldn’t have seen it only Mr. Bonelli stooped and picked me up in his arms. “Now look! Look at yourself, my little clown dog,” said he. “Is it not a good likeness?” And he took hold of my head and turned it toward the picture.
I knew it was me because of the clown clothes, and the spots of black.
I began to bark, and Mr. Bonelli turned to one of the men and said, “He knows it,--he knows it, my little Master Grineo. Never before was such a dog as he,” and then he dropped me gently and we went on into the theatre.
I had learned more about theatres now than I had known at first, and I had learned the names of a great many things about it.
The bright lights in front of the stage were called footlights. Then at each side of the stage were places called “boxes,” and they had chairs in them where people could sit, if they wanted to be very near the stage. When they sat in the boxes they were so near it was almost as though they were on the stage with us. Often there were a lot of children there, and I liked that because they laughed so loud and clapped their hands so hard when we did our tricks. But I didn’t pay so very much attention to anyone but Mr. Bonelli when I was on the stage. None of us did. We had to watch him and his little whip all the time if we were to do the right things.