AT THE CIRCUS.
It was over. The flames were gone. The Signora was once more seated, cantering easily round the ring, bending again to the clown's remarks. But Sue still sat breathless, her hands clasped together, her eyes shining. For a time she could not speak. At last she turned to Clarice with burning cheeks and fluttering breath.
"Clarice, from this moment that is what I live for! I can do that, Clarice, I know; I feel that I can. Do you suppose she would take me as a pupil? Do you think she would? If I can do that just once, then I can die happy!"
"How you talk, Sue Penrose!" said Clarice. "The idea! Who ever heard of a young lady going into a circus? Say, don't look over opposite. Those horrid Hart boys are over there, and they've been staring at you as if you belonged to them. Such impudence!"
CHAPTER IX
THE LONELY ROAD
The day of the circus was not a happy one for Mary Hart. She watched Sue go down the street, and her heart went out toward her friend. What a darling she was! How pretty she looked, and how well the plumed hat set off her delicate, high-bred face, and the little air she had of owning the world and liking her possession! Now that there were no mincing steps beside her, she walked with her own free, graceful gait, head held high, eyes bent forward, ready for anything.
"She ought really to be a princess," thought humble-minded Mary; and in her glow of admiration she did not see the troubled look in Sue's bright eyes.
The day went heavily. The boys, too, went off to the circus in the afternoon. Mary might have gone with them, but she had been given her choice between this treat and the concert that was coming off a week or two later, and had chosen the latter. If she and Sue could have gone together with the boys, that would have been another matter. She longed to tell the boys her secret, and beg them to keep an eye on Sue, in case she should get into any trouble. Several times the words were on the tip of her tongue, but the thought of her promise drove them back. She had promised in the solemn school-boy formula, "Honest and true, black and blue"; and that was as sacred as if she had sworn on any number of relics. There was a dreadful passage in "Lalla Rookh": "Thine oath! thine oath!"