Clara and Thelma were mothering her, importantly, each holding one of her little claw-hands, and shrilling explanations and information at her.
But where was Mrs. Stone—“old Stone-Face”—herself? Sally knew very well that the children had not come alone.
While Gus was discoursing grandiloquently upon the talents of Boffo, the human ostrich, Sally sat very prim and apparently composed, her watchful eyes veiled by the scrap of black lace that reached to the tip of her adorable little nose. Undoubtedly the philanthropist was a man—it was nearly aways a politician courting favor who won it cheaply and impressively by “treating” the orphans to a day at the circus or carnival or to a movie. But if he were present, as the philanthropic politician invariably was, Sally could not find him. That was odd, too, for he was usually the most prominent person at such an affair, taking great pains that no reporters who might happen to be present should overlook him and his great kindness of heart.
Then little old-maidish Miss Pond, sentimental little Miss Pond, who had befriended Sally by telling her all she knew of the child’s parentage, came hurrying nervously into the tent. She had undoubtedly been detained at the ticket booth and was sure, judging from her anxious, nervous manner, that the children had gotten into mischief during her brief absence.
Three or four of the little girls ran to cling to her hands, abjectly courting notice as Sally had known they would. But with a few absent-minded pats she shooed them away and bustled anxiously toward a woman whom Sally had not noticed before, so complete had been her absorption in the children.
The woman stood aloof near the platform of “the girl nobody can lift,” listening to Gus, the barker, with a slight, charming smile of amusement on her beautiful mouth. When Miss Pond joined her timidly, deferentially, the “lady,” as Sally instinctively thought of her from the first moment that she become aware of her, turned slightly, so that “Princess Lalla,” whose platform was quite near, got a complete and breath-taking view of her beauty.
“Oh!” Sally breathed ecstatically, her little brown-painted hands clasping each other tightly in her lap. “Oh, you’re beautiful! You are like a real princess, or a queen.” But she did not say the words aloud. Behind the little black lace veil her sapphire eyes widened and glowed; her breath came quickly over her parted, carmined lips.
The woman, who seemed scarcely older than a girl but who, by her poise and a certain maturity in her face, gave Sally the impression that she was a queen rather than a princess, had taken her hat off, as if the heat oppressed her. It was a smart, trim little thing of silvery-green felt, that had cupped her small head like the green cup that holds a flower. And her face was the flower, a flower bursting into bloom with the removal of the hat.
Sally had never in all her life seen hair like that—shimmering waves of pure gold, slightly rumpled by the removal of the hat, so that single threads of it caught the light from the gas jet that burned day and night in the rather dark tent. Her skin, pale with the heat of the day, was creamy-white, lineless, smooth and rich, so that Sally’s fingers longed to touch it reverently. Surely it could not feel like other flesh; it was made of something finer and rarer than cells and blood, dermis and epidermis.
Her small lovely mouth, soft and full-lipped as a child’s, was tender and amused and proud, the mouth of a woman who has always been adored for her beauty but whom adoration has not cheated of very human emotions. Sally wished that she could see the eyes more closely, for even while they were wide and laughing, sending out little sparkles of color and light, she thought there was a hint of sadness in them, of restlessness, as if only a part of her attention was given to the carnival and to the children.