As her hunted feeling of desperation relaxed she began to find some fun in her new situation, and when a woman with two little boys approached she came forward to wait on her, elated, important. “Two for five,” she said in a businesslike tone. The woman put down a dime, took up four doughnuts, divided them between her sons, and departed.
“My!” said Molly, looking admiringly at Betsy’s coolness over this transaction. Betsy went back to her dishes, stepping high.
“Oh, Betsy, see! The pig! The big ox!” cried Molly now, looking from her coign of vantage down the wide, grass-grown lane between the booths.
Betsy craned her head around over her shoulder, continuing conscientiously to wash and wipe the dishes. The prize stock was being paraded around the Fair; the great prize ox, his shining horns tipped with blue rosettes; the prize cows, with wreaths around their necks; the prize horses, four or five of them as glossy as satin, curving their bright, strong necks and stepping as though on eggs, their manes and tails braided with bright ribbon; and then, “Oh, Betsy, look at the pig!” screamed Molly again—the smaller animals, the sheep, the calves, the colts, and the pig, which waddled along with portly dignity.
Betsy looked as well as she could over her shoulder ... and in years to come she can shut her eyes and see again in every detail that rustic procession under the golden, September light.
But she looked anxiously at the clock. It was nearing five. Oh, suppose the girl forgot and danced too long!
“Two bottles of ginger ale and half a dozen doughnuts,” said a man with a woman and three children.
Betsy looked feverishly among the bottles ranged on the counter, selected two marked ginger ale, and glared at their corrugated tin stoppers. How did you get them open?