Some of her prophecies, such as twin babies for the newly married couple, brought shouts of laughter from the crowd, and some of her vague guesses as to the past went very wide of the mark, as the applicants did not hesitate to tell her—the old maid, for instance, who looked so motherly that Sally lavishly endowed her with a husband and three children; but nearly everyone who paid a quarter for what “Princess Lalla” could see in the magic crystal went away wondering and thrilled and satisfied. During the first lull between performances, Sally slipped out of the “Palace of Wonders” and daringly mingled with the crowds outside. It was all beautiful and wonderful to Sally, who had been to a circus only once in her life and never to a carnival before. Before the tent which housed the big glass tank into which “bathing beauties” dived and in which they ate bananas and drank soda-pop under water, she encountered Winfield Bybee, enormous, majestic, benign, for it was a good crowd and a fine day, and money was pouring into his pockets. “Well, well,” he grinned down at her, “I hear from Gus that you’re knocking ’em cold. Better run along in now, and you might see how many of the rubes you can make follow you into the Palace of Wonders. We don’t want to give ’em too much of a free show. And remember, girlie, for every quarter Princess Lalla earns as a fortune-teller, little Sally Ford gets a nickel for herself. Don’t take many nickels to make a dollar.” “Oh, Mr. Bybee, I’m so happy I’m about to burst,” Sally confided to him in a rush of gratitude. “But—do you think it’s very wrong of me to pretend to be a crystal gazer when really I can’t see a thing in it to save my life?” Bybee bellowed with laughter, so that the crowd veered suddenly toward them. He stooped to whisper closer to her little brown-stained ear: “Don’t you worry, sister. As old P. T. Barnum used to say, ‘There’s a sucker born every minute,’ and old Winfield Bybee knows that they like to be fooled. You just kid ’em along and send ’em away happy and I reckon the good Lord ain’t going to waste any black ink on your record tonight. It’s worth a quarter to be told a lot of nice things about yourself, ain’t it?” As she tripped swiftly across the dusty lot toward the Palace of Wonders, the crowd following her grew larger and larger. Becoming bolder because she felt that she was really “Princess Lalla” and not timid little Sally Ford, she deliberately flirted with the men who pressed close upon her, even waved a little brown hand invitingly toward the big tent. When she reached the tent door, the barker leaned down from his booth, behind which was set a small platform, and beckoned her to mount the narrow steps. Smilingly she did so, and the barker introduced her: