“Oh, spirit of H. L. Mencken, hear me!” the New Yorker prayed. “Do girls in the middle west really say that still? I wouldn’t have believed it! ‘I’m not that kind of girl!’” he repeated, laughing delightedly. “Of course you aren’t, darling! No girl ever is! And heaven forbid that I should be the sort of man—fellow, you say out here?—that you evidently believe I am! Now that we understand each other, I again suggest supper, a long, cooling drive in the governor’s choicest limousine—the old boy does himself rather well in cars, at the expense of the state—and a continuation of my extremely accurate reading of your future.”
“No!” Sally flared, her timidity submerged in anger. “Let me go this minute! I don’t like you! I hate you! If you don’t turn loose my arm, I’ll—I’ll scream ‘Hey rube’—”
“What a dire threat!” the New Yorker laughed with genuine amusement. “Am I the rube? Is that your idea of a taunt so crushing that—”
“It means,” Sally said with cold fury, “that every man connected with the carnival will rush into this tent and—and simply tear you to pieces! It’s the S O S signal of the circus and carnival, and it always works! Now—will you let me go? I swear I’ll scream ‘Hey, rube!’ if you don’t—”
“And I had planned such a delicious supper,” the New Yorker mourned mockingly as he slowly released her arm, as if reluctant to forego the pleasure that rounded slimness and smoothness gave his highly educated fingers.
Sally cried a little in the dress tent, but she was too angry to give way utterly to tears. The thought which stung her pride most hurtingly was that the New Yorker had seen something bad in her eyes, something of the mother of whose shame she was a living witness.
“But—I guess I showed him!” she told herself fiercely as she dabbed fresh brown powder on her tear-streaked face. “He won’t dare bother me again.”
But he did dare. He was a nonchalant, smiling, insolent figure, leaning on his cane, as she went through the next performance. She pretended not to see him, but never for a moment, as she well knew, did his cold black eyes waver from their ironic but admiring contemplation of her enchanting little figure in purple satin trousers and green jacket.
And at the late afternoon performance—four o’clock—he was there again, his fine, cruel, humorous mouth smiling at his own folly. She thought of appealing to Gus, the barker, to forbid him admission to the tent, but she knew Gus was too good a business man to heed such a wasteful request. Besides, the barker seemed to like him, or at least to like immensely the bill which invariably passed hands when the showman and the glorified “rube” met.
Then suddenly, at ten minutes after four, the New Yorker ceased to have any significance at all to her, at least for the moment. He was wiped out completely in the flood of terror and joy that swept over her brain, making her so dizzy that she leaned against the crystal stand for support.