“Yes,” Van Horne shrugged, arching his brows quizzically. “I confess I was rather stunned, for Enid doesn’t go in for personal charity. Huge checks and all that sort of thing—she’s endowed some sort of institution for ‘fallen girls,’ by the way—but it has never seemed to amuse her to play Lady Bountiful in person. Of course she may be nursing a secret passion for children, and took this means to gratify it where her crowd could not rag her about it.”
“Hasn’t she any children of her own?” Sally asked. “But I suppose she’s too young—”
“Not at all,” Van Horne laughed. “She’s past thirty, certainly, though she would never forgive me for saying so. She’s never had any children; been married about thirteen years, I think.”
“Oh, that’s too bad!” Sally’s voice was tender and wistful. “She’d make such a lovely mother—”
Van Horne interrupted with his throaty, musical laugh, and was in turn interrupted by Gus the barker’s stentorian roar:
“Right this way, la-dees and gen-tle-men! I want to introduce you to Princess Lalla, who sees all, knows all! Princess Lalla, world famous crystal-gazer, favorite—”
Sally straightened in her throne-like chair, her little brown hands cupping obediently about the “magic crystal” on the velvet-draped stand before her. Van Horne, with a last ironic chuckle, melted into the crowd, which had surged toward Sally’s platform.
When Gus’s spiel was finished, the rush began. At least a dozen hands shot upward, waving quarters and demanding the first opportunity to learn “past, present and future” from “Princess Lalla.”
She worked hard, conscientiously and cautiously, for she was vividly conscious that both Van Horne and Enid Barr were somewhere in the tent, listening perhaps, whispering about her.
Most of her fear of Enid Barr, which had resulted from the connection of the golden-haired woman with the orphanage children the day before, had evaporated. It was absurd to think that a woman of such wealth and beauty, whose philanthropy had undoubtedly been a gesture of boredom, was seriously interested in one lone little girl who had run away from charity.