hat I sat for hours in that hot little place, cut off
from the world, watching. Again and again, to the brass blare of some
hoiden tune, she set the words of the lyric that "she liked the feel
of," and she danced on and on. And when at last the music shattered off,
and she ceased, and ran behind a screening canvas, somehow I made my way
forward through the crowd that was clapping hands and calling her back,
and I gained the place where she stood.

When I asked her to come with me, she nodded and smiled, with unseeing
eyes, and assented quite simply, and then suddenly sat down before the
lifted tent flap.

"But I must wait for my money," she said. "That's what I came for--my
money. They thought I'd never earn my dollar, but I have."

At this I understood. And now I marvel how I talked at all to the man in
gilt knickerbockers who arrived and haggled over the whole matter.

Zorah, he explained, the sure-enough Zorah, had took down sick in the
last place they made, an' they'd had to leave her behind. An' when he
told about it down town that morning, this little piece here had up an'
offered. Somethin' had to be done--he left it to me if they didn't. He
felt his duty to the amusement park public, him. So he had closed with
her for a dollar for three fifteen-minute turns--he give two shillings a
turn, on the usual, but she'd hung out stout for the even money. An'
she'd danced her three, odd but satisfactory. You could hand 'em queer
things in the show business, if you only dressed the part. Yes, sure,
here was the dollar. Be on hand to-morrow night? No? Sufferin' snakes,
but was we goin' to leave him shipwrecked?

Finally I got her away, and skirted the market-place with her dancing at
my side, shaking her silver dollar in her shut palms and singing:--

"Busy, busy, busy all the day. An' then I earned my dollar, my
dollar--they never thought I'd earn my dollar ..."

I remember, as we struck into the unlighted block where Miss Liddy's
house stood, that I was struggling hard for my own serenity, so that for
a moment I did not observe that Ellen stopped beside me. But I knew that
she fell silent, and when I turned I saw her there on the dark walk
hurriedly twisting her splendid hair about her head. And by that and by
her silence I understood that she was suddenly herself, and of her own
mind, as we say.

On this, "Ellen!" said I quickly, "how fine of you to have earned your
Orphans' Home dollar so soon. But you have beat