“No, No! Don’t touch me!” she shuddered. “I won’t go! You know I love David!” she wailed, covering her face with her hands. “Why won’t you let me alone?”
Van laughed, settled back in his seat and crossed his arms upon his breast. “I can wait until you have your little tummy full of carnival life and of hiding from the police,” he told her in his old, nonchalant way. “Incidentally I have always bemoaned the fact that conquest is so damnably easy. It is a new experience to me—this being refused, and I suspect that I’m enjoying it. Now—shall I say good-night, since we’ve reached the carnival lot? It’s not goodby, you know, Sally. I assure you I’m admirably persistent. And remember, if Enid tries to make a nuisance of herself, you can always fly to Van. Good night, Sally, you adorable, ungrateful little wretch! No kiss? Perhaps it is better so. I’m afraid I should not care for the brand of lipstick that Princess Lalla uses.”
Sally did not tell David of Van Horne’s offer, for on Saturday, the last day of the carnival in Capital City, the boy developed a temperature which caused Gus, who had acted as volunteer surgeon, to exclude all visitors, even Sally.
Apparently Enid Barr had been convinced of Bybee’s gallant lies that little orphaned Betsy had been mistaken and that “Princess Lalla” was not “Sally Ford, play-acting,” but it was not until the show train was rolling out of the state in the small hours of Sunday morning that the girl dared breathe easily.
CHAPTER XIII
Sunday, on the show train, was a happy day, the happiest that Sally had ever known in her life. Freaks and dancers, barkers and concessionaires, all the members of that weirdly assorted family, the carnival, mingled in a joyous freedom from work and worry, singing together, reminiscing, gambling, gossiping.
The last week, except for the storm, had been an excellent one; money was free, spirits high. Even Mrs. Bybee, hovering like a mother hen over David, was good-natured, inclined to reminisce and give advice. Sally, whose talent for exquisite darning had been discovered by the women and girls, sat on the edge of David’s berth, her lap full of flesh and beige and gun metal silk stockings, her needle flying busily, her lips curved with a smile of pure delight, as she listened to the surge of laughter and song and talk. The midget, “Pitty Sing,” perched on the window ledge of David’s berth, a comical pair of spectacles across her infinitesimal nose, was reading aloud to David from one of her own tiny books, and David was listening, but his eyes were fixed worshipfully upon Sally, and now and again his left hand reached out and patted her busy fingers or twirled the hanging braid of her hair.
Oh, it was a happy day, and Sally was sorry to have it end. But the show had to go on. The train wheels could not click forever over the rails. Monday, with its bustle and confusion and ballyhoo and inevitable performances, lay ahead. But they were far out of the state which held Clem Carson, the orphanage, Enid Barr, Arthur Van Horne and all other menaces to freedom when the train did stop at last, on the outskirts of a town of 10,000 inhabitants.
Carnival routine had already become an old story to Sally; she no longer minded the curious stares of villagers, the crude advances of dressed-up young male “rubes.” The glamor had worn off, but in its place had come a deep contentment and a sympathetic understanding, born on that happy Sunday when the relaxed carnival family had shown her its heart and hopes. She was glad to be one of them, to be earning her living by giving entertainment and happiness—fake though her crystal-gazing was—to thousands of people whose lives were blighted with monotony.
During their first week in the new territory business was even better than the Bybees had dared hope. Positively the only calamity that befell the carnival was the discovery that Babe, the fat girl, had lost five pounds, due to her loudly confessed but unrequited passion for the carnival’s hero, David Nash.