"Stand up, Princess Lalla, and let these boys see what a Turkish princess looks like! Don't crowd now, boys!"
Sally slipped from her chair and advanced a pace or two toward the edge of the platform, her knees trembling so she could scarcely walk.
It did not seem possible to her that the glamorous, beautiful figure to whom the spieler had made a deep and ironic salaam was Sally Ford. She wondered if all those people staring at her with wide, curious eyes or with envy really believed she was the Princess Lalla, an escaped member of the harem of the Sultan of Turkey. She made herself see herself as they saw her--a slim, rounded, young-girl figure in fantastic purple satin trousers, wrapped close about her legs from knee to ankle with ropes of imitation pearls; a green satin tunic-blouse, sleeveless and embroidered with sequins and edged with gold fringe, half-revealing and half-concealing her delicate young curves; a provocative lace veil dimming and making mysterious the brilliance of her wide, childish eyes.
She wondered if any of the more skeptical would mutter that the golden-olive tint of her face, neck and bare arms had come out of a can of burnt-sienna powder, applied thickly and evenly over a film of cold cream. The mock-jewel-wrapped ropes of her blue-black hair, however, were real, and she felt their beauty as they lay against her slowly rising and falling breast.
To her gravely expressed doubts of the authenticity of her Turkish costume Mrs. Bybee had replied curtly, contemptuously: "My Gawd! Who knows or cares whether Turkish dames dress like this? It's pretty, ain't it? Them women may wear turbans and what-nots for all I know, but that black hair of yours ain't going to be covered up with no towel around your head."
And so, circling her brow and holding the scrap of black lace nose veil in place, was a crudely fashioned but gaudily pretty crown studded with imitation rubies and emeralds and diamonds as big as bird's eggs. Her feet felt very tiny and strange in red sandals, whose pointed toes turned sharply upward and ended roguishly in fluffy silk pompoms.
"I declare, you make a lot better Princess Lalla than Minnie Brooks did," Mrs. Bybee had commented after out-fitting Sally. "She took down with appendicitis in Sioux City and we ain't had a crystal gazer since--one of the big hits of the show, too."