"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.
"Oh!" Anger spurted out of Mrs. Bybee's jealous heart like air let out of a balloon. "Reckon I'm just an old fool! God knows I don't see why I should care what this old woman-chaser of a husband of mine does, but--I do! If you're ever in love, Sally, you'll understand a foolish old woman a little better. Now, young man, you take that murderous looking knife and that bacon back into the kitchen and scramble a couple of eggs for me. And I guess you can give Pop a rasher of that bacon, even if it is against the doctor's orders."
And the showman, beaming again and throwing "Good mornings" right and left, marched down the aisle, his arm triumphantly about his repentant wife's shoulders.
Sally watched them for a moment, a lovely light of tenderness and understanding playing over her sensitive face. Then she turned to David, who had not yet obeyed Mrs. Bybee's command. They smiled into each other's eyes, shyly, and the flush that made Sally's face rosy was reflected in the boy's tanned cheeks.
"I'm sorry, David, I didn't dream it was--you. Thank you, David." She could not keep from repeating his name, dropping it like a caress at the end of almost every sentence she addressed to him, as if her lips kissed the two slow, sweet syllables.
"I should have told you," David confessed in a low voice, slightly shaken with embarrassment and some other emotion which flickered behind the smile in his gold-flecked hazel eyes. "I--I thought you'd know. You needed the things and I knew you didn't have any money. I've got to get back into the kitchen," he added hastily, awkwardly. She had never seen him awkward in her presence before, and she was daughter of Eve enough to rejoice. And in her shy joy her face blossomed with sudden rich beauty that made Nita, the Hula dancer, who appeared in the doorway at that moment, look old and tawdry and bedraggled, like the last ragged sunflower withering against a kitchen fence.