The Rose in the Ring. George Barr McCutcheon
be good friends. I—I want her to know you well, David. I want her to be with—with some one who is different from the people here. You understand, don't you?"
"Yes," said David, suddenly enlightened. "I know what you mean. I shall be very happy, too."
"Ah, how gently you did that," she cried, a wistful gleam in her dark eyes. "How the blood tells its story! Yes, David, I want her to know you; I want her to—to be with her own kind." Her face flamed with sudden fervor; he was struck by the almost pathetic eagerness that leaped into her eyes, transfiguring them. "I have tried so hard to give her something of what I had myself, David, when I was a girl. Everything depends on the next year or two. She is thinking for herself now. It is the turning-point. You must know, David, you must see that she is not like the others here."
"She is like you," he said, very simply.
The blood surged once more to her cheeks; her lips parted with the quick breath of joy and gratitude. She thanked him very gently, very gravely. No word was uttered against the man who was Christine's father.
"I prayed last night, David, that you might stay with the show until the end of this season. I am determined that it shall be her last, no matter what it may cost both of us."
"Cost both of us," thought he, and at once knew what she meant. The cost, if necessary, would be the husband and father.
Then she told him, in hurried sentences, that she had watched him in the ring, and that her daughter had come back to her with glowing reports of his composure and cleverness. David's pride, at least, was appeased. She had looked at him, after all, and was interested.
He was struck by the sudden, curious change that came over Mrs. Braddock's face. She was looking past him toward the entrance to the circus tent. All the color, all the eagerness left her face in a flash; the warmth died out in her big brown eyes and in its stead appeared a look of positive dread and uneasiness—it might have been repugnance. Her lips grew tense, and he could see that she started ever so slightly, as if in surprise.
He glanced over his shoulder. Thomas Braddock was approaching, his face red with anger and drink. At his side walked a tall, exceedingly well-dressed stranger, who carried his silk hat in his hand and was smiling blandly upon the proprietor's wife.
"Oh, that man again!" he heard her say between her stiff lips. There was a world of loathing in the half-whispered sentence, which was so low that it barely reached his ears. He looked up quickly, and saw her face go darkly red again—the red of humiliation, he could have sworn.
"Go!" she said to David, quietly but firmly.
He turned away, vaguely conscious that the newcomer was more to be feared than Thomas Braddock himself. Instinctively the boy experienced a singular, instantaneous aversion to this immaculate intruder.
"Get out!" he heard Braddock roar after him as he paused at the partition to look once more at the stranger.
The man was bowing low before the straight, motionless figure of Mary Braddock. Her chin was high in the air, and David could almost have sworn that he saw her nostrils dilate.
From a place beyond the flap in the partition he surveyed this disturbing visitor.
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