“All dolled up and looking pretty enough to eat,” he chuckled. “Ain’t that a new dress?” “Oh, yes, and it fits perfectly,” Sally glowed. “Thanks so very much for the trunk and the dresses, Mrs. Bybee,” she added, tactfully addressing the showman’s wife. “I—I’ll pay you back out of my salary as I make it—” “What are you talking about?” Mrs. Bybee demanded sternly, her eyes flashing from Sally’s flushed face to her husband’s. “I never bought you any dresses or a trunk. Now, you looka here, Winfield Bybee! I’m a woman of few words, and of a long-suffering disposition, but even a saint knows when she’s got a stomachful! I swallowed your mealy-mouthed palaverin’ about this poor little orphan, but if you’re sneaking around and buying her presents behind my back, I’ll turn her right over to the state and not lose a wink of sleep, and let me tell you this, Winfield Bybee—” Her words were a rushing torrent, heated to the boiling point by jealousy and suspicion. Sally tried to speak, to interrupt her, but she might as well have tried to stop the Niagara. Under the force of the torrent Sally at last bowed her head, shrinking against the wall of the car, the very picture of detected guilt. The carnival owner gasped and waved his arms helplessly, tried to pat his wife’s hands and had his own slapped viciously for his pains. When at last Mrs. Bybee paused for breath, and to mop her perspiring face with her handkerchief, Bybee managed to get in his defense, doggedly, his bluster wilted under his wife’s tongue lashing: “You’re crazy, Emma! I didn’t buy her any presents. I never saw that dress before in my life. I don’t know what you or she’s talking about. I didn’t buy her anything! I—oh, good Lord!” He tried to put his arms about his wife, his face so strutted with blood that Sally felt a faint wonder, through her misery, that apoplexy did not strike him down. “What’s the matter, Sally?” David came striding out of the kitchen, a butcher knife in one hand and a slab of breakfast bacon in the other. “I don’t know, David,” she whispered forlornly. “I—I was just thanking Mrs. Bybee for this dress and another one and a trunk I found in the dress tent with my name on it—‘Princess Lalla’—” she stammered over the name—“and Mrs. Bybee says she didn’t give them to me.” “He thought he’d put something over on me, and me all dressed up like a missionary to go look for her precious mother. I guess her mother wasn’t any better than she should have been and this little soft-soap artist takes after her,” Mrs. Bybee broke in stridingly, but her angry eyes lost something of their conviction under David’s level gaze. “I bought the things for Sally, Mrs. Bybee,” he said quietly. “I should have told her, or put my card in. Unfortunately I didn’t have one with me,” he added with a boyish grin.