"I'm glad I ran into you," he told her. "I suppose you've been told that Enid-Mrs. Barr-is hot on your trail?"

"Yes," Sally nodded, her lips too stiff with sudden fright to form the word.

"She's almost convinced that you're really Sally Ford," he told her lightly. "And if she makes up her mind, there's nothing in heaven or h.e.l.l that can stop Enid Barr. A d.a.m.nably persistent little wretch! I've never been able to understand Enid's pa.s.sion for succoring 'fallen girls.' She appears to be such a normal little pagan otherwise."

Sally said nothing because she could not. But her sapphire eyes were enormous and her mouth was twitching piteously.

"Listen, Sally," Van Horne leaned toward her suddenly, crushing her little brown-painted hands between his own immaculate white ones. "Let me get you out of this mess! I've been thinking a lot about you-too d.a.m.ned much for my peace of mind! And this is what I want to do-"

"Please!" Sally gasped, shrinking far into the corner of the seat, but unable to tear her hands from his.

"Wait till you've heard what I have to say, before you begin acting like a pure and innocent maid in the clutches of a movie villain!" Van Horne commanded her scornfully.

"I want to send you to New York, give you a year in a dancing academy that trains girls for the stage and a year in dramatic school-both at the same time, if possible. You've got the figure and the looks and the personality for a musical comedy star, or Arthur Van Horne is the 'rube'

that you carnival people call him. What do you say, Sally? Think of it.

A year or two with nothing to worry about except your studies and your dancing and then-Broadway! I'll put you over if I have to buy a show for you! Come, Sally! Say 'Thank you, Van. I'll be ready to leave tomorrow.'"

As long as she lived, Sally Ford would remember with shame that for one moment she was tempted by Arthur Van Horne's offer to prepare her for a stage career in New York. She had "play-acted" all her life; her heart's desire before she had met David had been to become an actress, and in that one moment when she knew that realization of her ambition lay within her grasp she wanted to stretch out her hands and seize opportunity.

Her eyes glistened; she gasped involuntarily with delight. If Van Horne had not been hasty, if he had not s.n.a.t.c.hed her to him with a strangled cry of triumph as his black eyes-mocking no longer, but wide and brilliant with desire-read the effect of his words, she might have committed herself, have promised him anything. But he did touch her, and her flesh instinctively recoiled, for every nerve in her body was still athrill with David's good-night kiss.

"No, No! Don't touch me!" she shuddered. "I won't go! You know I love David!" she wailed, covering her face with her hands. "Why won't you let me alone?"

Van laughed, settled back in his seat and crossed his arms upon his breast. "I can wait until you have your little tummy full of carnival life and of hiding from the police," he told her in his old, nonchalant way. "Incidentally I have always bemoaned the fact that conquest is so d.a.m.nably easy. It is a new experience to me-this being refused, and I suspect that I'm enjoying it. Now-shall I say good-night, since we've reached the carnival lot? It's not goodby, you know, Sally. I a.s.sure you I'm admirably persistent. And remember, if Enid tries to make a nuisance of herself, you can always fly to Van. Good night, Sally, you adorable, ungrateful little wretch! No kiss? Perhaps it is better so. I'm afraid I should not care for the brand of lipstick that Princess Lalla uses."

Sally did not tell David of Van Horne's offer, for on Sat.u.r.day, the last day of the carnival in Capital City, the boy developed a temperature which caused Gus, who had acted as volunteer surgeon, to exclude all visitors, even Sally.

Apparently Enid Barr had been convinced of Bybee's gallant lies that little orphaned Betsy had been mistaken and that "Princess Lalla" was not "Sally Ford, play-acting," but it was not until the show train was rolling out of the state in the small hours of Sunday morning that the girl dared breathe easily.

CHAPTER XIII

Sunday, on the show train, was a happy day, the happiest that Sally had ever known in her life. Freaks and dancers, barkers and concessionaires, all the members of that weirdly a.s.sorted family, the carnival, mingled in a joyous freedom from work and worry, singing together, reminiscing, gambling, gossiping.

The last week, except for the storm, had been an excellent one; money was free, spirits high. Even Mrs. Bybee, hovering like a mother hen over David, was good-natured, inclined to reminisce and give advice. Sally, whose talent for exquisite darning had been discovered by the women and girls, sat on the edge of David's berth, her lap full of flesh and beige and gun metal silk stockings, her needle flying busily, her lips curved with a smile of pure delight, as she listened to the surge of laughter and song and talk. The midget, "Pitty Sing," perched on the window ledge of David's berth, a comical pair of spectacles across her infinitesimal nose, was reading aloud to David from one of her own tiny books, and David was listening, but his eyes were fixed worshipfully upon Sally, and now and again his left hand reached out and patted her busy fingers or twirled the hanging braid of her hair.

Oh, it was a happy day, and Sally was sorry to have it end. But the show had to go on. The train wheels could not click forever over the rails.

Monday, with its bustle and confusion and ballyhoo and inevitable performances, lay ahead. But they were far out of the state which held Clem Carson, the orphanage, Enid Barr, Arthur Van Horne and all other menaces to freedom when the train did stop at last, on the outskirts of a town of 10,000 inhabitants.

Carnival routine had already become an old story to Sally; she no longer minded the curious stares of villagers, the crude advances of dressed-up young male "rubes." The glamor had worn off, but in its place had come a deep contentment and a sympathetic understanding, born on that happy Sunday when the relaxed carnival family had shown her its heart and hopes. She was glad to be one of them, to be earning her living by giving entertainment and happiness-fake though her crystal-gazing was-to thousands of people whose lives were blighted with monotony.

During their first week in the new territory business was even better than the Bybees had dared hope. Positively the only calamity that befell the carnival was the discovery that Babe, the fat girl, had lost five pounds, due to her loudly confessed but unrequited pa.s.sion for the carnival's hero, David Nash.

On Wednesday, David was permitted to get up, and that afternoon for the first time he witnessed Sally's performance as "Princess Lalla." She had become so proficient in her intuitions regarding those who sought knowledge of "past, present and future" that his smiling, amused attentiveness to her "readings" did not embarra.s.s her.

When the show was over, she joined him proudly, her little brown-painted hands clinging to his arm, her face uplifted adoringly to his, as she pattered at his side on a tour of the midway. It was then that her dreams came true. At last she was "doing the carnival" with a "boy friend," like other girls. And David played up magnificently, buying her hot dogs, salt water taffy, red lemonade-the two of them drinking out of twin straws from the same gla.s.s.

On Thursday, Friday and Sat.u.r.day morning before show time the two wandered about the village to which the carnival had journeyed the night before. It was heavenly to be able to walk the streets unafraid. David walked with head high, shoulders squared, unafraid to look any man in the face, and Sally could have cried with joy that he was free again, for Bybee had a.s.sured them that there was not the slightest chance of extradition on the charges which still stood against the two in their native state.

Some day, somehow, the cloud against them would be lifted, and David could walk the streets of Capital City as proudly as he walked these village streets.

With money in their pockets, they could afford to buy all the necessities and little luxuries which their enforced flight from the Carson farm had deprived them of. Sally, her little face enchantingly grave and wise, chose ties and socks and shirts for David, and almost forgot to bother about her own needs. And David, in another part of the village "general store," bought, blushingly but undauntingly, little pink silk bra.s.sieres and silk jersey knickers and silk stockings for the girl he loved. When she saw them she burst into tears, hugging them to her breast as if they were living, feeling things.

"Why, David, darling!" she sobbed and laughed, "I've never before in all my life had any silk underwear or a pair of silk stockings! I-I'm afraid to wear them for fear I'll spoil them when I have to wash them. Oh, the dear things! The lovely, precious things!"

"And here's something else," David said to her that Sat.u.r.day morning.

They were in the still-deserted Palace of Wonders, their purchases spread out on Sally's platform.

"Give me your hand and shut your eyes," David commanded gently, with a throb of excitement in his voice.

She obeyed, but when she felt a ring being slipped upon the third finger of her left hand her eyes flew open and found a sapphire to match them.

For the ring that David had bought for her was a plain loop of white gold, with a deep-blue sapphire in an old-fashioned Tiffany mounting, such as tradition has made sacred to engagement rings.

"Oh, David!" She laid her hand against her cheek, pressing the stone so hard that it left its many-faceted imprint upon her flesh. Then she had to kiss it and David had to kiss it-and her.

"I wish it could have been a diamond," David deprecated. "I suppose all girls prefer diamond engagement rings. But-"

"Oh, David, is it an engagement ring?" she breathed, then flung herself upon his breast, her hands clinging to his shoulders.

"Of course it is, precious idiot!" he laughed. Very gently but insistently he forced her face upward, so that their eyes met and clung.

His were boyishly ardent but solemn, hers were misted over with tears, but brighter and bluer than the stone upon her finger. "I don't know when we can be married, Sally, but-I wanted you to have a ring and to know that I'll always be thinking and planning and-oh, I can't talk! You want to be engaged, don't you, Sally? You love me-enough?"

"I adore you. I love you so that I feel I am not even half a person when you're not with me. I couldn't live without you, David," she said solemnly.

They were still sitting there, talking, planning, making love shyly but ardently, when Gus, the barker, mounted the box outside the tent and began to ballyhoo for the first show of the morning.

"Eleven o'clock and I'm not in make-up yet, and you've got to run the wheel for Eddie today," Sally cried in dismay, jumping to her feet and gathering up her scattered purchases and presents.

As the day wore on, with show after show drawing record crowds for a village of its size, "Princess Lalla" gazed more often into the shining blue depths of a small sapphire than into the magic depths of her crystal. But perhaps the sapphire had a magic of its own, for never had her audiences been better pleased, never had quarters been thrust so thick and fast upon her.

At half-past nine that night, Gus, the barker, had not quite finished his "spiel" about the Princess Lalla when the girl, whose eyes had been fixed trance-like upon her ring, saw a woman suddenly begin to ascend the steps to the platform. Before her startled eyes had traveled upward to the woman's face Sally knew who it was. For twelve years that big, stiffly corseted, severely dressed body had been as familiar to her as her own. Instinctively, though her blood had turned instantly to ice water in her veins, Sally's right hand closed over her left, to conceal the sapphire. Thelma had not been permitted to keep even a bit of blue gla.s.s-

Sally felt as if her flesh were shriveling upon her bones. An actual numbness spread from her shoulders to her fingertips, in antic.i.p.ation of the shock of feeling the Orphans' Home matron's grip upon them. How many, many times in her twelve years in the orphanage had she been roughly jerked to her feet by those broad, heavy hands, when she had been caught in some minor infringement of Mrs. Stone's stern rules!

Her hands, instinctively clasped so that her precious engagement ring might be hidden from those gimlet-like gray eyes, were so rigid that Sally wondered irrelevantly if they would ever come to life again, to curve their fingers about the magic crystal. But of course she would never "read" the crystal again. She was caught, caught!

"Are you deaf?" Mrs. Stone's harsh voice pierced her numbed hearing as if from a great distance. "I want my fortune told. I've paid my quarter and I don't intend to dilly-dally around here all day."

The relief was so terrific that the girl's body began to tremble all over, but the rigidity of terror had mercifully relaxed, so that she could lift her shaking hands.

Gus, the barker, who always remained upon the platform during her "readings," had long ago arranged a code signal of distress, and now she gave it. Her hands went up to the ridiculous crown of fake jewels that banded her long black hair and adjusted it, tipping it first to the right and then to the left, as if to ease the pressure of its weight upon her forehead.

That very natural gesture told Gus more plainly than words that "Princess Lalla" was in danger and asked him to use his ingenuity to rescue her. There was no need for her to lift her eyes to him. Jerkily her hands came down, hovered over the crystal, and before Mrs. Stone could voice another harsh complaint, the sing-song voice which "Princess Lalla" used was requesting "ze ladee" to sit down in the chair opposite.