Girl Alone Part 28

But what should she tell Mrs. Stone, with whose personality and history she had been familiar for twelve years? If she dared to read "past, present and future" with any degree of accuracy, the matron would be startled into observing the "seeress" with those gimlet eyes of hers. If she went too wide of the mark in generalities, Mrs. Stone was entirely capable of raising a disturbance which would ruin business for the rest of the day.

"Well, what do you see-if anything?" Mrs. Stone demanded angrily.

That gave Sally her cue. Bending low over the crystal, so that her face was within a few inches of that of the woman who sat opposite her, with only the crystal stand between them, she pretended to peer into the depths of the gla.s.s ball. Then slowly she began to shake her head regretfully.

"Princess Lalla is so-o-o sor-ree"-the small, sing-song voice was raised a bit, so that Gus, who had strolled leisurely across the platform to take his stand behind Sally's chair, might hear perfectly-"but ze creeystal she ees dark. She tell me nossing about ze nice-tall la-dee.

Sometimes it ees so. Ze gen-tle-man weel give ze money back."

The thin little shoulders under the green satin jacket shrugged eloquently, the little brown hands spread themselves with a gesture of helplessness and regret.

"Glad to refund your money, lady!" Gus sang out loudly. "Here you are!

Better luck next time! Princess Lalla is the gen-u-ine article! If she don't see nothing in the crystal for you, she don't string you along-right here, lady! Here's your money back-"

Sally leaned back in her chair, weak with relief, her eyes closed, as Gus tried to urge her nemesis from the platform. In a moment the danger would be over-

Then, so quickly was it done that Sally had not the slightest chance to shield her eyes, a hand had s.n.a.t.c.hed the little black lace veil from her face. Terror-widened sapphire eyes stared, with betraying recognition, into narrowed, angry gray ones. Mrs. Stone nodded with grim satisfaction.

"So Betsy was right! If that idiotic Amelia Pond had told me while the carnival was still in Capital City, I'd have been saved this trip. Get up from there, Sal-"

A shriek from the throat of a woman in the audience, which was packed densely about the platform, interrupted the matron, successfully diverting the attention of the curious from the puzzling drama upon the platform.

"I've been robbed! Help! Police!" Again the siren of a woman's scream made the air hideous. "It was her! She was standing right by me! Police!

Police!"

Even Mrs. Stone was diverted for the moment. Gus, the barker, sprang to the edge of the platform as a red-faced, disheveled woman fought her way through the crowd to the platform.

"What seems to be the trouble, madam?" Gus demanded loudly. "Who took your purse?" He reached a helping hand to the woman who was struggling to get to the steps leading to the platform.

"It was _her_!" The "country woman," whom Sally had recognized instantly as a "schiller," an employe of the circus, extremely useful in just such emergencies, shook an angry forefinger in Mrs. Stone's astounded face.

"She's got it right there in her hands! The gall of her! Standing right by me, she was, before she come up here to get her fortune told. Stole my purse, she did, right outa my hands-"

"This is _my_ purse!" Mrs. Stone shrilled, her face suddenly strutted with blood. "I never heard of anything so brazen in my life! It's my purse and I can prove it is." She turned menacingly toward Gus, who was looking from one angry woman to another as if greatly embarra.s.sed and perplexed.

"Reckon I'd better call the constable and let him settle this thing," he said apologetically.

"I'm a deppity sheriff," a man called loudly from the audience. "Make way for the law!"

The awe-stricken and happily thrilled crowd parted obediently to let a fat man with a silver star on his coat lapel pa.s.s majestically toward the platform. Sally knew him, too, as a "schiller" whose princ.i.p.al job with the carnival was to impersonate an officer of the law when trouble rose between the "rubes" and any member of the carnival's big family.

"Come along quiet, ladies!" the fat man admonished the two women briskly. "We'll settle this little spat outside, all nice and peaceable, I _hope_." The last word was spoken to Mrs. Stone with significant emphasis.

"This is an outrage!" the orphanage matron raged, but the "deppity sheriff" gave her no opportunity to say more, either in her own defense or to Sally.

Gus, the barker, bent over the trembling girl while the crowd was still enthralled over the spectacle of two apparently respectable middle-aged women being dragged out of the tent under arrest.

"Better beat it, kid. The dame's hep to you. Reckon she's the Orphans'

Home matron, you been telling us about. Here, take this-" and he thrust a few crumpled bills into her hand-"and don't ever let on to Pop Bybee that I helped you get away. Goodby, honey. Good luck. You're a great kid.... All right, folks! Excitement's all over! It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you the smallest and prettiest little lady in the world. We call her 'Pitty Sing,' and I don't reckon I have to tell you why-"

Five minutes later Sally was cowering against the rear wall of Eddie Cobb's gambling-wheel concession, pouring out her story to David, to whom she had fled as soon as Gus had tolled the crowd away from her platform.

"And she recognized me, David!" the girl sobbed, the palms of her trembling hands pressed against her face. "I was so startled when she tore my veil off that I couldn't pretend any longer. As soon as she gets away from the 'schillers' she'll set the real constable on my trail. Gus told me to beat it-oh, David! What's going to become of me-and you? Oh!"

And she choked on the sobs that were tearing at her throat.

"Why, darling child, we're going to 'beat it,' as Gus advises. Of course! We've 'beat it' together before. Listen, honey! Stop crying and listen. Go to the dress tent, get your make-up off, change your clothes and make a small bundle of things you'll need, and I'll join you there, just outside the door flaps, in not more than ten minutes. I've got to get my money from Pop Bybee-"

"He'll stop you!" Sally wailed despairingly. "He'll make us both stay-"

"Nothing can stop me," he promised her grimly. "And he'll give me my money, too, if I have to take it away from him. But it'll be all right.

Now run, and for heaven's sake, darling, don't let these 'rubes' see you crying. Smile for David," he coaxed, tilting her chin with a forefinger.

When her lips wavered uncertainly, he bent swiftly and kissed her. "Poor little sweetheart! There's nothing to be afraid of. Gus will see that the 'schillers' give us plenty of time, even if he has to call in a real cop and have Mrs. Stone arrested on a fake charge. Now, walk to the dress tent, and I'll be there before you're ready."

When Sally reached the dress tent she found "Pitty Sing" perched on her bed, her tiny fingers busy counting a sheaf of bills that was almost as large as her miniature head.

"Gus brought me," she piped in her matter-of-fact, precise little voice.

"Get to your packing, Sally, while I'm talking. But you might kiss me first, if you don't mind. I don't usually like for people to kiss me.

No, wait until you get your make-up off," she changed her mind as she saw tears well in Sally's hunted blue eyes. "This money is for you and David. He's going with you, of course?"

"Yes," Sally acknowledged proudly, as her fingers dug deep into a can of theatrical cold cream. "But we won't need the money, Betty. Please-"

"Don't be silly!" little Miss Tanner admonished her severely. "Gus sent the word around the tent and everybody chipped in. Jan cleaned the boys at poker last night and he contributed $20. I think there's nearly a hundred altogether. Gus gave $20, and Boffo-"

"Oh, I can't take it!" Sally protested. "It's sweet of you all, but I'd feel awful-"

"Shut up and get busy!" "Pitty Sing" commanded tersely. "I'd wear that dark-blue taffeta if I were you, and the blue felt you bought in Williamstown. It won't show up at all in the dark. Lucky for you it's night, isn't it? It will be nice to be married in, too-"

"Married?" Sally whirled from her open trunk, her cold, cream-cleansed face blank with astonishment.

From outside the tent came a whistled bar of music-"I'll be loving you always!"

"That's David!" Sally gasped, a blush running swiftly from her throat to the roots of her soft black hair. "I'll have to hurry. I-I think I _will_ wear the blue taffeta!"

"Pitty Sing" chuckled softly, but there were tears in the old, wise little blue eyes set so incongruously in a tiny, wizened face no bigger than a baby's.

"Oh, let's say goodby to the carnival!" Sally cried, homesickness for the dearest "family" she had ever known already tightening her throat with tears.

And so they paused, hand in hand, on the crest of the little hill which rose at the end of Main Street, on which Winfield Bybee's Bigger and Better Carnival was selling temporary joy and excitement to villagers and farmers weary of the insular monotony of their lives.

There it all lay just below them-big tents and little tents with gay, lying banners; the merry-go-round with its music-box grinding out "Sweet Rosie O'Grady"; the ferris wheel a gigantic loop of lights. The composite voice of the carnival came up to these two children of carnival who were deserting it, and the roar, muted slightly by distance, was like the music of a heavenly choir in their ears.

CHAPTER XIV

"Listen!" Sally whispered, her fingers closing tensely over David's arm.

"Gus, ballyhooing The Palace of Wonders. I wonder if he'll remember not to spiel about 'Princess Lalla.'"

They could see him, a small figure from that distance, looking like a Jack-in-the-box as he waved his arms and thundered the dear, familiar phrases which Sally would never forget if she lived to be a hundred.