Sally tried to speak, to interrupt her, but she might as well have tried to stop the Niagara. Under the force of the torrent Sally at last bowed her head, shrinking against the wall of the car, the very picture of detected guilt. The carnival owner gasped and waved his arms helplessly, tried to pat his wife’s hands and had his own slapped viciously for his pains. When at last Mrs. Bybee paused for breath, and to mop her perspiring face with her handkerchief, Bybee managed to get in his defense, doggedly, his bluster wilted under his wife’s tongue lashing:
“You’re crazy, Emma! I didn’t buy her any presents. I never saw that dress before in my life. I don’t know what you or she’s talking about. I didn’t buy her anything! I—oh, good Lord!” He tried to put his arms about his wife, his face so strutted with blood that Sally felt a faint wonder, through her misery, that apoplexy did not strike him down.
“What’s the matter, Sally?” David came striding out of the kitchen, a butcher knife in one hand and a slab of breakfast bacon in the other.
“I don’t know, David,” she whispered forlornly. “I—I was just thanking Mrs. Bybee for this dress and another one and a trunk I found in the dress tent with my name on it—‘Princess Lalla’—” she stammered over the name—“and Mrs. Bybee says she didn’t give them to me.”
“He thought he’d put something over on me, and me all dressed up like a missionary to go look for her precious mother. I guess her mother wasn’t any better than she should have been and this little soft-soap artist takes after her,” Mrs. Bybee broke in stridingly, but her angry eyes lost something of their conviction under David’s level gaze.
“I bought the things for Sally, Mrs. Bybee,” he said quietly. “I should have told her, or put my card in. Unfortunately I didn’t have one with me,” he added with a boyish grin.
“Oh!” Anger spurted out of Mrs. Bybee’s jealous heart like air let out of a balloon. “Reckon I’m just an old fool! God knows I don’t see why I should care what this old woman-chaser of a husband of mine does, but—I do! If you’re ever in love, Sally, you’ll understand a foolish old woman a little better. Now, young man, you take that murderous looking knife and that bacon back into the kitchen and scramble a couple of eggs for me. And I guess you can give Pop a rasher of that bacon, even if it is against the doctor’s orders.”
And the showman, beaming again and throwing “Good mornings” right and left, marched down the aisle, his arm triumphantly about his repentant wife’s shoulders.
Sally watched them for a moment, a lovely light of tenderness and understanding playing over her sensitive face. Then she turned to David, who had not yet obeyed Mrs. Bybee’s command. They smiled into each other’s eyes, shyly, and the flush that made Sally’s face rosy was reflected in the boy’s tanned cheeks.
“I’m sorry, David, I didn’t dream it was—you. Thank you, David.” She could not keep from repeating his name, dropping it like a caress at the end of almost every sentence she addressed to him, as if her lips kissed the two slow, sweet syllables.