She was very small and slight, shorter even than little Miss Pond, who had to look down as she talked to her. But for all her adorable smallness she carried herself with a certain arrogance. Every movement she made as she and Miss Pond talked together and then joined the children was proud and graceful.
She was wearing a summer sports suit of silvery-green knitted silk, which showed to the best advantage the miniature, Venus proportions of her body. As she swung toward the children, nodding acquiescence to Miss Pond’s eager suggestions, little Eloise Durant, the child who had been the “new girl” of Sally’s last day in the orphanage, catapulted herself from the huddling mass of children and impulsively seized her hand. The swift, cordial smile with which she greeted the child and released her hand as quickly as possible kept Sally from resenting the action. But Eloise, still hypersensitive, knew that she had been delicately snubbed and hung back as Gus, the barker, herded the orphans toward Jan the giant’s platform.
Sally saw the tell-tale tremble of Eloise’s babyish mouth, and her heart ached with desire to comfort the child. Outwardly Eloise had become exactly like all the other little girls—shy, bleating when the other little sheep bleated, obediently excited when they were excited, silent when they were silent—but underneath she was still bewildered and unreconciled to the death of her mother, the cheap little stock-company actress who had evidently adored her child and been adored in return.
But someone else had seen Eloise’s hurt, so unconsciously inflicted by the lovely and arrogant lady. Betsy, the six-year-old, ran from the herd to take Eloise’s hand, with an absurd and touching little gesture of motherliness.
“Come on, Eloise,” Sally heard Betsy cry in her shrill little voice. “Let’s just you and me look at the funny people. We can see the giant when the crowd moves on. I want to see ‘Princess Lalla’ more’n anything. I want my fortune told. I want to ask her where Sally is—you remember—Sally Ford. That man says she ‘sees all, knows all,’ so he ought to know where Sally is.”
“The big girls say she run away,” Eloise answered, her eyes round with awe. “They say she did something awful bad and run away with a man—”
“Sally didn’t do nothing bad,” Betsy retorted indignantly. “She couldn’t. She was the best ‘big girl’ in the Home. She play-acted for us little kids and—oh!” She stopped with a gasp, her eyes popping as she took in the fantastic splendor of “Princess Lalla.” “Listen, Princess Lalla,” she mustered up courage to whisper coaxingly, “does it cost a lot to get your fortune told? I’ve only got a nickel that the New York lady gave me—she give every one of us a dime, but I spent a nickel for some salt water taffy—”
Sally could hardly restrain herself from crying out: “Oh, Betsy, it’s me! Sally Ford! You don’t have to spend your poor little nickel to find me! I’m here!” But she knotted her little brown hands more tightly and managed to smile with a princess-like indifference and weariness as she cooed in her “Turkish” accent:
“Eeet costs noth-ing to get ze fortune told. Womens and mens must pay 25 cents to learn past, pres-ent and future, but for you—noth-ing! Come up here by my side. I weel read the crystal.”
Betsy’s eyes grew rounder and rounder; her little mouth fell open in astonishment. Then with a wild shout of joy she stumbled up the stairs and flung her arms about Sally crying and laughing: