“Leave Poll alone; she's in one of her trances!” called a motherly, good-natured woman whose trunk stood next to Polly's, and whose business was to support a son and three daughters upon stalwart shoulders, both figuratively and literally.
“Well, I ain't in any trance,” answered the dark girl, “and I think it's pretty tough for him to take up with a rank outsider, and expect us to warm up to her as though he'd married one of our own folks.” She tossed her head, the pride of class distinction welling high in her ample bosom.
“He ain't asking us to warm up to her,” contradicted Mademoiselle Eloise, a pale, light-haired sprite, who had arrived late and was making undignified efforts to get out of her clothes by way of her head. She was Polly's understudy and next in line for the star place in the bill.
“Well, Barker has put her into the 'Leap of Death' stunt, ain't he?” continued the brunette. “'Course that ain't a regular circus act,” she added, somewhat mollified, “and so far she's had to dress with the 'freaks,' but the next thing we know, he'll be ringin' her in on a regular stunt and be puttin' her in to dress with US.”
“No danger of that,” sneered the blonde; “Barker is too old a stager to mix up his sheep and his goats.”
Polly had again lost the thread of the conversation. Her mind had gone roving to the night when the frightened girl about whom they were talking had made her first appearance in the circus lot, clinging timidly to the hand of the man who had just made her his wife. Her eyes had met Polly's, with a look of appeal that had gone straight to the child's simple heart.
A few nights later the newcomer had allowed herself to be strapped into the cumbersome “Leap of Death” machine which hurled itself through space at each performance, and flung itself down with force enough to break the neck of any unskilled rider. Courage and steady nerve were the requisites for the job, so the manager had said; but any physician would have told him that only a trained acrobat could long endure the nervous strain, the muscular tension, and the physical rack of such an ordeal.
What matter? The few dollars earned in this way would mean a great deal to the mother, whom the girl's marriage had left desolate.
Polly had looked on hungrily the night that the mother had taken the daughter in her arms to say farewell in the little country town where the circus had played before her marriage. She could remember no woman's arms about HER, for it was fourteen years since tender hands had carried her mother from the performers' tent into the moonlit lot to die. The baby was so used to seeing “Mumsie” throw herself wearily on the ground after coming out of the “big top” exhausted, that she crept to the woman's side as usual that night, and gazed laughingly into the sightless eyes, gurgling and prattling and stroking the unresponsive face. There were tears from those who watched, but no word was spoken.
Clown Toby and the big “boss canvas-man” Jim had always taken turns amusing and guarding little Polly, while her mother rode in the ring. So Toby now carried the babe to another side of the lot, and Jim bore the lifeless body of the mother to the distant ticket-wagon, now closed for the night, and laid it upon the seller's cot.