'Miss Rosie dear,' he said, 'I thought you were never coming; I got quite frightened about you; you're such a little mite of a thing to go fighting your own way in that great big crowd.'
'Oh, Toby,' said Rosalie, 'I haven't seen Mother Manikin!' and she told him what she had heard from the giant of Mother Manikin's prospects.
'I am sorry,' said Toby. 'Then you have had all your walk for nothing?'
'Yes,' said the child; 'and I never mean to go through the fair again if I can possibly help it—never again!'
CHAPTER XIV
BETSEY ANN
There was still some time before Rosalie need dress herself for the play. She sat still after Toby had left her, thinking over all she had seen in the fair; and it made her very sad indeed. There were such a number of lies being told—she knew there were; such a number of things were being passed off for what they really were not. And then, after all, even if the shows were what they pretended to be, what a poor miserable way it seemed of trying to be happy! The child wondered how many in that moving multitude were really happy.
Rosalie was thinking about this when she heard a sound close to her, a very different sound from the shouting of the cheap-jacks or the noisy proclamations of the showmen. It was the sound of singing. She went to the door of the caravan and looked out. The little theatre was set up at the edge of the fair. Close to the street, and very near the caravan,—so near that Rosalie could hear all they said,—was standing a group of men. One of them had just given out a hymn, and he and all the rest were singing it. The child could hear every word of it distinctly. There was a chorus at the end of each verse, which came so often, that before the hymn was finished she knew it quite perfectly—
'Whosoever will, whosoever will;
Sound the proclamation over vale and hill;
'Tis a loving Father calls His children home:
Whosoever will may come!'
By the time that they had finished the first verse of the hymn, a great crowd had collected round the men, attracted perhaps by the contrast between that sweet, solemn hymn, and the din and tumult in every other part of the fair.