On Wednesday, David was permitted to get up, and that afternoon for the first time he witnessed Sally’s performance as “Princess Lalla.” She had become so proficient in her intuitions regarding those who sought knowledge of “past, present and future” that his smiling, amused attentiveness to her “readings” did not embarrass her.
When the show was over, she joined him proudly, her little brown-painted hands clinging to his arm, her face uplifted adoringly to his, as she pattered at his side on a tour of the midway. It was then that her dreams came true. At last she was “doing the carnival” with a “boy friend,” like other girls. And David played up magnificently, buying her hot dogs, salt water taffy, red lemonade—the two of them drinking out of twin straws from the same glass.
On Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning before show time the two wandered about the village to which the carnival had journeyed the night before. It was heavenly to be able to walk the streets unafraid. David walked with head high, shoulders squared, unafraid to look any man in the face, and Sally could have cried with joy that he was free again, for Bybee had assured them that there was not the slightest chance of extradition on the charges which still stood against the two in their native state.
Some day, somehow, the cloud against them would be lifted, and David could walk the streets of Capital City as proudly as he walked these village streets.
With money in their pockets, they could afford to buy all the necessities and little luxuries which their enforced flight from the Carson farm had deprived them of. Sally, her little face enchantingly grave and wise, chose ties and socks and shirts for David, and almost forgot to bother about her own needs. And David, in another part of the village “general store,” bought, blushingly but undauntingly, little pink silk brassieres and silk jersey knickers and silk stockings for the girl he loved. When she saw them she burst into tears, hugging them to her breast as if they were living, feeling things.
“Why, David, darling!” she sobbed and laughed, “I’ve never before in all my life had any silk underwear or a pair of silk stockings! I—I’m afraid to wear them for fear I’ll spoil them when I have to wash them. Oh, the dear things! The lovely, precious things!”
“And here’s something else,” David said to her that Saturday morning.
They were in the still-deserted Palace of Wonders, their purchases spread out on Sally’s platform.
“Give me your hand and shut your eyes,” David commanded gently, with a throb of excitement in his voice.
She obeyed, but when she felt a ring being slipped upon the third finger of her left hand her eyes flew open and found a sapphire to match them. For the ring that David had bought for her was a plain loop of white gold, with a deep-blue sapphire in an old-fashioned Tiffany mounting, such as tradition has made sacred to engagement rings.