When red-eyed Faith put in appearance late that afternoon, ready to deliver the other three cakes to her customers, she looked stealthily about for the ruined white mound, and not finding it, decided that Gail had hid it until her heavy disappointment should have eased somewhat; and she, too, asked no questions.
At first she refused to accompany the sisters on their visit to the fairgrounds, but Peace's bitter misery softened her heart, and she went, though still too sorely grieved to enjoy much of the gay scenes and beautiful exhibits. However, all day long she studiously avoided the building where the cooked food was on exhibition, though Peace was wild to investigate its mysteries, and even Gail tried to persuade her to enter. Late in the afternoon, just as the oldest sister was proposing that they start for home, Cherry caught sight of a familiar figure entering the Horticultural Building, and raced after her with a yell of recognition, "Mrs. Grinnell, Mrs. Grinnell, we are all here!"
"Well, well," exclaimed the woman, smiling into the flushed face at her elbow, "this is great luck. Come, all of you! I have found something I want you to see. You, most of all, Faith."
She led them down one street and up another, into a white doorway before any of them had a chance to discover the name of the building, through a maze of aisles and a surging throng of weary sightseers, and paused in the cake department, pointed toward a blue-ribbon cake in one case, and said triumphantly, "Peace's geography cake was the hit of the evening last Saturday, but it took the caramel layer to win the prize, Faith!"
CHAPTER XVII
THE CIRCUS AND THE MISSIONARY
"Oh, look, Allee! See the elephants and lions and giraffes and zebras on that poster. It's the cirkis as sure as I'm alive! Do you know I've always wanted to see the cirkis, and this is the first time I ever knew one to stop at Parker."
"How do you know it will stop here?" asked skeptical Allee, who was just beginning to read, and found the long words on the billboard too much for her to master.
"'Cause it says so. Parker, the eighteenth, Allee. Just think, that's only next Saturday! Just a week from today! Isn't it lucky it's on Saturday? Do you s'pose we can go?"