Page:Caroline Lockhart--The full of the Moon.djvu/60

, was a trifle late in parting, and the stamping of restless feet, catcalls and hisses, told Nan something of the temper of the audience which the traveling entertainers had to face.

It was apparent that Poth had been altogether correct in his surmise that the audience would be in no mood for leniency with the failure of the last "troupe" still rankling.

The performers themselves may have felt the unfriendly atmosphere, for, when at last the curtain parted, and the boy who had driven the wagon came out and announced a banjo solo by himself, his face wore a twisted, frightened smile.

The air was simple, but he stumbled badly in his nervousness, and when he bowed himself off it was amid a faint half-hearted round of applause which was little short of condemnation.

Beneath his brave assumption of ease Nan felt intuitively the young, entertainer's discomfiture and humiliation at his failure to please, and her heart went out in quick sympathy to the strange trio and the ordeal before them.