Summary
Beneath the sawdust halo of a traveling big-top, Pat—foundling swaddled in spangles—grows like a wild poppy in wagon ruts, tutored by Toto, the white-face clown whose greasepaint grin masks a possessive ache. When the caravan pitches tent in a magnolia-scented Southern town, she pirouettes into the orbit of Dick Beverley, blue-blooded fugitive from ancestral portraits, who trades cravat for spurs and vaults into the ring as trick rider. Their courtship is a duet of star-flung glances above hoof-thunder; yet the real high-wire act begins when the boy’s limestone-boned dynasty invites the circus waif into their chandeliered hush. There, Pat must translate the grammar of sawdust into the syntax of soirées—until a punch-bowl prank by Dick’s kid brother, laced with circus gin, detonates the ballroom’s respectability. Exile, confession, reconciliation: the final tableau unites tight-rope and tiara in a nuptial procession that smells of elephants, gardenias, and forgiveness.
Synopsis
Pat, an orphan born and reared in the circus, is the protégé of Toto, the clown, who cherishes the hope of marrying her. In a southern town, Pat meets Dick Beverley, son of an aristocratic family, who joins the circus as a trick rider after a quarrel with his parents, and the two fall in love. Although finally accepted by the Beverleys, she is required to learn the social graces in their home. When her circus friends pay a visit, they are expelled for being intoxicated, but when Dick's younger brother confesses to spiking the punch all is forgiven and the couple are married.
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