Not that she would want to be back with them! But they were her people, the only chums she had ever known. How well she knew how they felt, liberated for one blessed afternoon from the bleak corridors of the orphanage, catapulted by someone's generosity into fairyland. For to them the carnival was fairyland. These romance-and-beauty-starved orphans saw only glamor and wonder, believed with all their hearts every extravagant word that Gus, the barker, uttered in his stentorian bawl.
Suddenly love and compassion filled her heart to over-flowing. She wanted to run down the steps that led to her little platform and gather Clara and Thelma and Betsy to her breast. She felt so much older and wiser than she had been two weeks ago, when she had "play-acted" for them as they scrubbed the floor of the dormitory. How awed and admiring they would be if, when their thin little bodies were pressed tight in her arms, she should whisper, "It's me--Sally--play-acting! It's me, kids!" But of course she couldn't do it; she would be betraying not only herself but David, and she would rather die than that David should be caught and punished for defending her against Clem Carson.
As the children milled excitedly in the tent, huddling together in groups like sheep, holding each other's hands, giggling and whispering together as their awed eyes roamed from one "freak" to another, Sally searched their faces hungrily, jealously.
Thelma had cut a deep gash in her cheek; it would leave a scar. Six-year-old Betsy had a summer cold and no handkerchief; her cheeks were painted poppy-red with fever, or perhaps it was only excitement.
There was a new little girl whom Sally had never seen before, such a homely little runt of a girl, with enormous, hunted eyes and big freckles on her putty-colored cheeks. Her snuff-colored hair had been clipped close to her scalp, so that her poor little round head looked like the jaw of a man who has not shaved for three days.
Clara and Thelma were mothering her, importantly, each holding one of her little claw-hands, and shrilling explanations and information at her.
But where was Mrs. Stone--"old Stone-Face"--herself? Sally knew very well that the children had not come alone.