When she threw back the lid she found a shiny black tin make-up box, containing the burnt-sienna powder Mrs. Bybee had used in making her up for the first day’s performances; a big can of theatrical cold cream; squares of soft cheesecloth for removing make-up; two new towels; mascara, lip rouge, white face powder, a utilitarian black comb and brush; tooth paste and tooth brush. “Oh, these kind people!” she whispered to herself, and bent her head upon the make-up box and wept grateful tears. Then, smiling at herself and humming a little tune below her breath, she lifted the tray and found—not the tell-tale dresses which Pearl Carson had given her and which had been minutely described by the police in the newspaper account of the near-tragedy on the Carson farm—but two new dresses, cheap but pretty, the little paper ticket stitched into the neck of each showing the size to be correct—fourteen. She was still kneeling before her trunk, blinded with tears of gratitude, when a coarse, nasal voice slashed across the dress tent: “Well, strike me dumb, if it ain’t the Princess Lalla in person, not a movie! Don’t tell me you’re gonna bunk with us, your highness! I thought you’d be sawing wood in Pop Bybee’s stateroom by this time! What’s the matter he ain’t rocking you to sleep and giving you your nice little bottle?” Sally rose slowly, the new dresses slithering to the floor in stiff folds. She batted the tears from her eyes with quick flutters of her eyelids and then stared at the girl who stood at the tent flap, taunting her. She saw a thin, tall girl, naked to the waist except for breastplates made of tarnished metal studded with imitation jewels. About her lean hips and to her knees hung a skirt of dried grass, the regulation “hula dancer” skirt. “You’re—Nita, aren’t you?” Sally’s voice was small, placating. “I’m—” “Oh, I know who _you_ are! You’re the orphan hussy the police are lookin’ for!” the harsh voice ripped out, as Nita swung into the tent, her grass skirts swishing like the hiss of snakes. “Furthermore, you’re Pop Bybee’s blue-eyed baby girl! And—you’re the baby-faced little she-devil that stole my graft with that little midget! Well, Princess Lalla, I guess we’ve been introduced proper now, and we can skip formalities and get down to business. Hunh?” And she bent menacingly over Sally, evil black eyes glittering into wide, frightened blue ones, her mouth an ugly, twisting, red loop of hatred. Sally backed away, instinctively, from the snake-tongues of venom in those black eyes. “I’m sorry I’ve offended you, Miss—Nita.—” “If you’re not you will be! Want me to tip off the police? Well, then, if you don’t, listen, because I want you to get this—and get it good, all of it!” Four girls, two of them thin to emaciation, one over-fat, the fourth as beautifully shaped as a Greek statue, trailed dispiritedly into the dress tent, their hands groping to unfasten the snaps of their soiled silk chorus-girl costumes.