They got on the seven o’clock streetcar going back past the mills. Marcia kept her face pressed against the window, blinking hard at the red glaring sky to hide her tears. Aunt Lois and Mama wrangled for a while as to whose fault it was the evening had been spoiled, Harry’s, or Mr. Sweeney’s, or Grandma’s. Then both ladies stared into space with tight lips, and did not speak to each other the rest of the trip. Marcia’s heart was heavy with disappointment. This would never have happened to the oldest or youngest, she bitterly reflected, just to the middle one.

6

IN THE SPRING LONDON JUNCTION turned into a real city, with crowds on the street and the trains bringing in strangers every day. This was due to visits from the carnival, Sells’ Circus, a medicine show, and later on a tabernacle with revival meetings. There wasn’t room in the London Junction Hotel for all the visitors, so the townspeople let out their spare rooms for fifty cents a night. Aunt Lois rejected Grandma’s urgent advice to make room for Rosetta, the Rose Dancer from the carnival, but the children’s mother was finally persuaded to give up her own bedroom to her. This was not so much Grandma’s persuasive powers as the fact that Mrs. Willard was snatching at every penny she could earn and was lonely without her husband now that his trips lasted so much longer.

For once Lena was jealous of Marcia who didn’t have to go to school, and could be petted by the glamorous roomer, could even spend an afternoon in the tent dressing room, peeking at the Rose Dance performance through a hole in the canvas. Rosetta’s Rose Dance was the high-class act of the carnival, but there were many other wonders hidden in tents along the street and in the railroad lot, all pointed out by her mother on an exploring expedition the very first day. There was the white horse that could count and spell, the fortune-teller in the gypsy clothes, the snake charmer with the boa constrictor pet, the sword swallower, and the midgets. There were two midgets dressed like a king and queen who rode in a tiny royal coach drawn by midget ponies with midget footmen and coachmen in white wigs and knee breeches. They drove through town every day at noon so that the schoolchildren might see them. Marcia was so excited over the midgets she ran away to follow them through the streets back to their tent. But she got into the wrong tent in her confusion and found herself before a long glass case wherein lay a huge snake. The snake’s eyes were on a level with her own, and she stood hypnotized with terror, unable to look away. She was saved by the arrival of Charlie Friend. “I’m lost,” she babbled.

“You ran away, you mean,” Charlie said. “Come on home and get your whipping.”

The presence in the house of Rosetta saved her from punishment, although the snake itself had punished her enough already. Rosetta gave her a popcorn ball and called her “darlin” so that Marcia at once became her slave.