Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour by Laura Lee Hope

Author:Laura Lee Hope [Hope, Laura Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2005-11-18T09:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER XV

WAS IT FRED?

"What's this? What's this you're talking about?" suddenly asked Mr. Brown, as he heard what Bunny said. Or rather, Bunny's father did not hear exactly, for he had been thinking about something else. But he had caught the name Fred Ward.

"Bunny thinks that colored banjo player with that medicine show may be Fred Ward," said Mrs. Brown. "Do you think it would be of any use to inquire, Daddy?"

"Why, that is a medicine show, isn't it!" exclaimed Mr. Brown, as though he saw it for the first time. "And it's just like the one we heard about that had a boy banjo player with it."

"There's a boy banjo player now," said Bunny. "He's going to play, Daddy, too! Do you think it could be Fred?"

The man who was selling the bottles of medicine, after telling the people how much good it would do them, had stopped to let the boy traveling with him play the banjo.

There are, or there used to be, many such traveling medicine shows. Sometimes there would be a whole troop of Indians, some real and some make-believe, that would be engaged by the seller of the medicine. He would have the Indians do some of their queer dances and then, when a crowd had collected, he would sell some medicine—maybe some he said the Indians made themselves.

Another medicine seller would go about with a gaily painted wagon, carrying a cornet player, a singer or a banjoist to attract a crowd. And when the men and women were gathered about the end of the wagon, which had a broad platform on the end and a flaring gasolene torch at night, the man would tell about his medicine and sell all he could.

This traveling medicine show which Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue saw was like those. And, just as the Browns reached the place in the village square where the torch on the wagon was burning, the man had finished selling a large number of bottles of medicine. It was about time he amused the crowd again, he thought. So he called in a loud voice:

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, while I am getting out of my storeroom some more bottles of my wonderful medicine that will cure all your pains and aches, I will have my friend here, Professor Rombodno Prosondo entertain you on his magical banjo. Professor Rombodno Prosondo, I might say, is the most wonderful player on the banjo you have ever heard. He has traveled all over the world and played in every country. Professor, you will now oblige!"

Of course what the medicine man said about the banjo player was only a joke, and the people knew that. He was not a professor at all. But he was a good banjo player and a singer, and Bunny and Sue were delighted with the music. The songs, too, were funny.

"He sings like a real colored boy," said Sue.

"Maybe he is," her father observed.

"Yes, and maybe he's only blacked up, like most of them," suggested Mrs.

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