“All right, children, right this way!” Gus was ballyhooing loudly. “Permit me to introduce ‘Pitty Sing,’ the smallest and prettiest little woman in the world. Just 29 inches tall, 29 years old and 29 pounds heavy. Did I say ‘heavy’? Excuse me, Pitty Sing! I meant 29 pounds light! Look at her, little ladies and gents! Ain’t she cute? Her parents were just as big as your papas and mamas—”
He remembered just too late that he was talking to orphans, and his jolly face went dark red. But he recovered quickly, glanced about his audience, saw that Miss Pond was straying nervously toward Sally’s platform, as if halfway convinced that Betsy’s childish intuition had been correct.
“Oh, Miss Pond!” he sang out ingratiatingly. “I wonder if you’d do me the favor to step up on the platform. I believe Betsy is scared. Yessir, I believe she’s scared half out of her skin!” He laughed, stooped to chuck Betsy under the chin, then, with a courtly gesture, offered Miss Pond his hand.
Sally looked on, her throat tight with fear and with tears of gratitude toward Gus, as the barker, with a rapid fire of talk and joking, kept his audience completely hypnotized. He jollied shy little Betsy into taking the midget into her arms, like a baby or a big doll, and only Sally, of all those who looked on, could guess how keenly the artificially smiling little atom of humanity was resenting this insult to her dignity.
He coaxed and flattered and flustered Miss Pond into standing beside “Pitty Sing,” so that the children could see what a vast difference there was in their height. And somehow he had attracted the attention of a carnival employe, for before he had exhausted the possibilities of the midget as a diversion, Winfield Bybee himself came striding into the Palace of Wonders, mounted the midget’s platform and, after a moment’s whispered conference with Gus, made an announcement:
“Children, I’m old Pop Bybee; Winfield Bybee is the way it’s wrote down in the Bible. I own this carnival and I want to tell you children that I’m proud to have you as my guests. I love children, always did! Now, boys and girls, the Ferris wheel and the whip and the merry-go-rounds are waiting for you.”
He was interrupted by a whoop of joy from the boys, in which the girls joined more timidly. “It won’t cost you a cent. If your chaperon—” and he turned to Miss Pond with a courtly bow—“will do me the honor to accept these tickets, you’ll all have a ride on the Ferris wheel, the whip and the merry-go-round absolutely free. Don’t crowd now, children, but gather at the door of the tent. I thank you.”
When he sprang, rather stiffly, from the platform, he offered Miss Pond his hand, then, with her arm pressed to his side, he escorted her with pompous courtesy to the door of the tent, where the children were already milling about, wild with excitement.
In her terror Sally had forgotten the golden-haired woman in the green silk sports suit. Now that the danger was passing, miraculously averted by Gus and Pop Bybee, she started to draw a deep, trembling sigh of relief, but it was choked in her throat by the discovery that she was being regarded intently by the beautiful woman, who was standing beside the midget’s platform.
“Oh!” Sally thought in a new flutter of terror. “She heard Betsy call me Sally Ford. She’s going to question me. I wonder who she is. Maybe she’s a trustee’s wife—oh, she’s coming! She’s going to talk to me—”