: The book opens with a character study of "Ma Carey" the owner of ihe carnival The reader is shown how the avaricious old woman runs her fair under the guise of philan-trophy, but actually to fill her own pockets with enough money to keep her daughter Sylvia in a life of luxury and seclusion in a respectable school in the hope that she will contact with the best type of people and eventually make a good marriage. He is shown how "Ma Carey" en-Couragés graft and squeeze among her concessionaires in order that she may claim her rake-off. She has sufficient hold over them to prevent attempts to leave her fair, and keeps them in deadly fear of her by threats of revealing to the authorities her knowledge of their past transgress sions.
The legitimacy of her philanthropical claims is threatened by the appearance of Sylvia at the fair ground. The old lady warns all her staff to conceal from her daughter the chicanery and baseness of the business, and woe betide the unfortunate who should let slip anything which might cast any doubt in Sylvia's eyes of the purity of her mother's motives. After a few weeks of carnival life the sordidness and trickery penetrate the girl's eager young mind, although she thinks her mother is ignorant of it all. Eventually the worst side of her mother's character is revealed by the wealthy young manufacturer to whom Sylvia is engaged to be married. At this stage "Ma Carey," realizing her unsavoury reputation is liable to stand in the way of her daughter's marriage, makes a supreme sacrifice. At the end of the book one is left with the impression that, although "Ma Corey" is a villainous old harridan, she is rather a dear at heart—w.v.K.c.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.