IX 

 THE FLYING CLOWN 



There are many accounts of the flying clown, in 

 books, nearly all of which refer to him as bull-bat or 

 nighthawk, and a member of the Goatsucker or Night- 

 jar family. But he was n't a bull and he was n't a bat 

 and he w^as n't a hawk and he was n't a jar; and he flew 

 more by day than by night, and he never, never milked 

 a goat in all his life. So for the purposes of this story 

 we may as well give him a name to suit ourselves, and 

 call him Mis Nomer. 



He was a poor skinny little thing, but you would not 

 have guessed it to see him; for he always wore a loose 

 fluffy coat, which made him look bigger and plumper 

 than he really was. It was a gray and brown and creamy 

 buff-and-white sort of coat, quite mottled, with a rather 

 plain, nearly black, back. It was trimmed with white, 

 there being a white stripe near the end of the coat-tail, 

 a big, fine, V-shaped white place under his chin that had 

 something the look of a necktie, and a bar of white 

 reaching nearly across the middle of each wing. 



These bars would have made 3^ou notice his long, 

 pointed wings if he had been near you, and they were 

 well worth noticing; for besides just flying with them, — - 



133 



