She smiled at the picture of herself draped in a sheet and crowned with her own braids:—an ermine cloak and a crown of gold adorning a queen! “If they could see me now! Play-acting all the time, all dressed up in purple satin trousers and a green satin jacket all glittery with gold braid! I wish I had lots of money, so I could send them all tickets to come to the carnival,” her thoughts ran on, as homesickness for the place she had hoped never to see again rose up, treacherous and unwelcome, to dim her joy in the glorious miracle of David’s love. “I suppose,” she confessed forlornly, “that Mrs. Stone is the only mother I’ll ever know. I wish I’d always been good, so she wouldn’t believe the awful things Clem Carson said about me. She thinks I’m bad now—like my mother. I wonder,” she was startled, her face flushing hotly under the brown powder, “if I am bad! They say it’s in the blood. I’m crazy to have David kiss me, and—and he had to ask me not to. Maybe David is afraid I’m bad, too.” The thought was unbearable. She wanted to fly to David, to search his gold-flecked hazel eyes again, to see if he had lost any of his “respect” for her. But she wouldn’t kiss him! She’d bite her tongue out first! She was going to be good, good, prove to herself and David and all the world that “it” wasn’t in her blood. But all day, as the crowds gathered and money clinked merrily as it fell into cash boxes, she longed for David; lived over every kiss he had given her, from the brushing of his lips against the tip of her nose to that dizzying wedding of lips when their love had been confessed in the moonlight. And because she was bemused with romance, thrilling with her own awakening to love, she made an almost riotous success of her crystal-gazing that first day of the carnival in Capital City. Girls laughed shyly and cuddled against their sweethearts provocatively as they left the Palace of Wonders, determined to make “Princess Lalla’s” enchanting prophecies come true. And she was so seductively beautiful herself, asparkle with love as she was, that three or four unaccompanied young men, seeking knowledge of the present, past and future, suggested that she fulfil her own prophecies of a “zo beautiful brunette,” until, embarrassed though flattered, she took refuge in assuming that all gentlemen prefer blondes. She did not see David that night after the carnival had shut up shop, for he could not leave the show train and only male performers, barkers and concessionaires were permitted to hang around the train. Sally understood from the midget, “Pitty Sing,” that a nightly poker game attracted the men to the privilege car and that fist-fighting and even gun-play was no uncommon break in the monotony. Pop Bybee, genial until he heard the rattle of poker chips, was the heaviest winner as a rule, many a performer’s salary finding its way back into the stateroom safe within a few hours after Mrs. Bybee had reluctantly handed it over.