For the third time that day Sally was having David Nash, the only friend she had ever made outside the orphanage, flung into her face as a sweetheart or worse. Winfield Bybee's casual words to his wife--"Can't you see she's clear gone on that Dave chap of hers?"--had made her heart beat fast with a queer, suffocating kind of pleasure, a pleasure she had never before experienced in her life. Those words had somehow initiated her into young ladyhood, fraught with strange, lovely, privileges, among them the right to be "clear gone" on a man--a man like David! The midget's "your David" and "Of course you're in love with him, and he's crazy about you--a blind person could see that," had sent her heart soaring to heaven, like a toy balloon accidentally released from a child's clutch.
But Nita's "that sheik of yours," Nita's venomously spat command, "give him the gate, ditch him, shake him," aroused in her a sudden blind fury, a fury as intense as Nita's.
"I'll do no such thing! David's mine, as long as he wants to be! You have no right to dictate to me!"
"Is that so?" Nita straightened, hands digging into her hips, a toss of her ragged, badly curled blond head emphasizing her sarcasm. "Is that so? Maybe you'll think I had some right when the cops tap you on the shoulder tomorrow! Too bad you and your David can't share a suite in the county jail together!"
"You'd--you'd do that--to David, too?" Sally whispered over cold lips.
"I thought that'd get under your skin," Nita laughed harshly. Then, as though the interview was successfully concluded, from her standpoint, the red-painted nails of her claw-like hands began to pick at the fastening of her grass skirt.
Sally was turning away blindly, feeling like a small, trapped animal, when a tiny, shrill voice came from the midget's cot:
"I heard every word you said, Nita! I think you must have gone crazy. The heat affects some like this, but I never saw it strike a carnival trouper quite so bad--"
"You shut up, you little double-crossing runt!" Nita whirled toward the midget's bed.
"I may be a runt," the midget's voice shrilled, "but I'm in full possession of my faculties. And when I tell Winfield Bybee the threats you've made against this poor child, you'll find yourself stranded in Stanton without even a grass skirt to earn a living with. And if the carnival grapevine is still working, you'll find that no other show in the country will take you on. It will be back to the hash joints for you, Nita, and I for one think the carnival will be a neater, sweeter place without you. Get your make-up off and get into bed, Sally. And don't worry. Nita wouldn't have dared try to bluff a real trouper like that."