“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.