"Ay, but it won't be a bloody bird," gasped Adam cajolingly, "when you've seen her pretty feathers."
At this, apparently, recollection of Adam's face or voice returned to the showman. He remained silent while with palsied fingers Adam unlatched my bolts and bars. Bent almost double and half-stifled, I sat there in sight, my clothes spread brightly out about me. The cool air swirled in, and for a while my eyes dazzled at the bubbling blaze of a naphtha lamp suspended from the pole of the tent above the criss-cross green-bladed grass at my feet. I lifted my head.
There stood Adam, in his black tail-coat rubbing his arm; and there the showman. Still to the tips of my fingers, I sat motionless, gazing up into the hard, high-boned, narrow-browed face with its small restless eyes voraciously taking me in. Fortunately the choked beating of my heart was too small a sound for his ear; and he was the first to withdraw from the encounter.
"My God," he muttered, and spat into a corner of the canvas booth—with its one dripping lamp, its rough table and chair, and a few oddments of his trade.
"And what, my handsome young lady," he went on in a low, carneying tone, and fidgeting with his hands, "what might be your little imbroglio?"
In a gush, presence of mind returned to me, and fear passed away. I quietly listened to myself explaining without any concealment precisely what was my little imbroglio. He burst out laughing.
"Stage-struck, eh? There's a young lady now! Well, who's to blame 'ee?"
He asked me my age, my name, where I came from, if I could dance, sing, ride; and stared so roundly at me that I seemed to see my garish colours reflected in the metallic grey of his eyes.
All this was on his side of the bargain. Now came mine. I folded tight my hands in my lap, glanced up at the flaming lamp. How much would he pay me?
It was as if a shutter had descended over his face. "Drat me," said he, "when a young lady comes selling anything, she asks her price."