“That’s David!” Sally gasped, a blush running swiftly from her throat to the roots of her soft black hair. “I’ll have to hurry. I—I think I will wear the blue taffeta!”
“Pitty Sing” chuckled softly, but there were tears in the old, wise little blue eyes set so incongruously in a tiny, wizened face no bigger than a baby’s.
“Oh, let’s say goodby to the carnival!” Sally cried, homesickness for the dearest “family” she had ever known already tightening her throat with tears.
And so they paused, hand in hand, on the crest of the little hill which rose at the end of Main Street, on which Winfield Bybee’s Bigger and Better Carnival was selling temporary joy and excitement to villagers and farmers weary of the insular monotony of their lives.
There it all lay just below them—big tents and little tents with gay, lying banners; the merry-go-round with its music-box grinding out “Sweet Rosie O’Grady”; the ferris wheel a gigantic loop of lights. The composite voice of the carnival came up to these two children of carnival who were deserting it, and the roar, muted slightly by distance, was like the music of a heavenly choir in their ears.
CHAPTER XIV
“Listen!” Sally whispered, her fingers closing tensely over David’s arm. “Gus, ballyhooing The Palace of Wonders. I wonder if he’ll remember not to spiel about ‘Princess Lalla.’”
They could see him, a small figure from that distance, looking like a Jack-in-the-box as he waved his arms and thundered the dear, familiar phrases which Sally would never forget if she lived to be a hundred.
She was about to run back down the hill, but David strode after her and put his arms about her comfortingly. “Sally, honey, we haven’t time! Throw them a kiss from here, and then we’ve got to hurry away.”
She broke from his embrace and flung her arms out in a passionate gesture of love and farewell. “Goodby, Carnival. Thank you for sheltering David and me! Goodby, Pop Bybee and Mrs. Bybee! Goodby, Gus! Goodby, Jan. Goodby, Noko! Goodby, Boffo! And Babe! Goodby, dancing girls! I hope you all land on Broadway with Ziegfeld! Oh, goodby, Pitty Sing, dear little Betty! Goodby, goodby!” Then she flung herself upon David’s breast and held him tight with all the strength in her thin young arms. “I’ve only got you now, David! Oh, David, what is going to become of us? Do you really love me, darling?”