But Grandma Padgett did not enjoy the tavern bed or the tavern breakfast. She passed the evening until midnight searching the streets of Richmond, accompanied by Zene and his limp. Some of the tavern people had seen her children in front of the house, but the longest search failed to bring to light any trace of them in or about that building. The tavern-keeper interested himself; the chamber maids were sympathetic. Two hostlers and a bartender went different ways through the town making inquiries. The landlady thought the children might have wandered off to the movers' encampment, where there were other children to play with. Grandma Padgett bade Zene put himself on one of the carriage horses and post to camp. When he came back he reported that Thrusty Ellen and Jonathan were asleep in the tents, and nobody had seen Robert and Corinne.
While searching the streets earlier in the evening, Grandma Padgett observed the pig-headed man's pavilion, and this she also explored with Zene. A crowd was making the canvas stifling, and the pig-headed man's performances were being varied by an untidy woman who screamed and played on a portable bellows which had ivory keys, after explaining that Fairy Carrie, the Wonderful Musical Child, had been taken suddenly ill and could appear no more that night.
Grandma Padgett remained only long enough to scan twice over every face in the tent. She went out, telling Zene she was at her wits' end.
“Oh, they ain't gone far, marm,” reassured Zene. “You'll find out they'll come back to the tavern all right; mebby before we get there.”
But every such hopeful return to base disheartened the searchers more. At last the grandmother was obliged to lie down.
Early in the morning the Virginian came, full of concern. His party was breaking camp, but he would stay behind and help search for the children.
“That I won't allow,” said Grandma Padgett. “You're on a long road, and you don't want to risk separating from the colony. Besides no one can do more than we can—unless it was Son Tip. As I laid awake, I wished in my heart Son Tip was here.”
“Can't you send him a lightnin' message?” said the Virginian. “By the telegraphic wire,” he explained, quoting a line of a popular song.
“I wish I could,” said Grandma Padgett, “but there's no telegraph office in miles of where he's located. I thought of it last night. There's no way to reach him that I can see, but by letter, and sometimestheylay over on the road. And I don't allow to stop at this place. I'm goin' to set out and hunt in all directions till I find the children.”
The Virginian agreed that her plan was best. He also made arrangements to ride back and tell her if the caravan overtook them on the 'pike during that day's journey. Then he and Grandma Padgett shook hands with each other and reluctantly separated.
She made inquiries about all the other roads leading out of Richmond. Zene drove the carriage out of the barnyard, and Grandma Padgett, having closed her account with the tavern, took the lines, an object of interest and solicitude to all who saw her depart, and turned Old Hickory and Old Henry on a southward track. Zene followed with the wagon; he was on no account to loiter out of speaking distance. The usual order of the march being thus reversed, both vehicles moved along lonesomely. Even Boswell and Johnson scented misfortune in the air. Johnson ran in an undeviating line under the carriage, as if he wished his mistress to know he was right there where she could depend on him. His countenance expressed not only gravity, but real concern. Boswell, on the other hand, was in a state of nerves. If he saw a bank at the roadside he ran ahead and mounted it, looking back into the carriage, demanding to know, with a yelping howl, where Bobaday and Corinne were. When his feelings became too strong for him he jumped at the step, and Grandma Padgett shook her head at him.
“Use your nose, you silly little fice, and track them, why don't you?”
As soon as Boswell understood this reproach he jumped a fence and smelt every stump or tuft of grass, every bush and hummock, until the carriage dwindled in the distance. Then he made the dust smoke under his feet as a sudden June shower will do for a few seconds, and usually overtook the carriage with all of his tongue unfurled and his lungs working like a furnace. Johnson reproved him with a glance, and he at once dropped his tail and trotted beside Johnson, as if throwing himself on that superior dog for support in the hour of affliction.
At noon no trace of Robert and Corinne had been seen. Grandma Padgett halted, and when Zene came up she said:
“We'll eat a cold bite right here by the road, and then go on until sunset. If we don't find them, we'll turn back to town and take another direction.”
They ate a cold bite, brought ready packed from the Richmond tavern. The horses were given scant time for feeding, and drank wherever they could find water along the road.
Cloudless as the day was, Grandma Padgett's spectacles had never made any landscape look as blue as this one which she followed until sunset. Sometimes it was blurred by a mist, but she wiped it off the glasses.
At sunset they had not seen a track which might be taken for Robert or Corinne's. The grasshoppers were lonesome. There was a great void in the air, and the most tuneful birds complained from the fence-rails. Grandma Padgett constantly polished her glasses on the backward road.
Nothing was said about making a halt for supper or any kind of cold bite. The carriage was silently turned as one half the sun stood above the tree-tops, I and it passed the wagon without other sign. The wagon turned as silently. The shrill meadow insects became more and more audible. Some young calves in a field, remembering that it was milking time, began to call their mothers, and to remonstrate at the bars in voices full of sad cadences. The very farmhouse dogs, full-fed, and almost too lazy to come out of the gates to interview Boswell and Johnson, barked as if there was sickness in their respective families and it was all they could do to keep up their spirits and refrain from howling.
The carriage and wagon jogged along until the horizon rim was all of that indescribable tint that evening mixes with saffron, purple and pink. Grandma Padgett became anxious to reach Richmond again. The Virginian might have returned over the road with news of her children. Or the children themselves might be at the tavern waiting for her. Zene drove close behind her, and when they were about to recross a shallow creek, scooped between two easy swells and floating a good deal of wild grapevine and darkly reflecting many sycamores, he came forward and loosened the check-reins of Hickory and Henry to let them drink. Grandma Padgett felt impatient at any delay.
“I don't think they want water, Zene,” said she.
“They'd better cool their mouths, marm.” he said. But still he fingered the check reins, uncertain how to state what had sent him forward.
“Seems like I heard somebody laugh, marm,” said Zene.
“Well, suppose you did,” said Grandma Padgett. “The whole world won't mourn just because we're in trouble.”
“But it sounded like Corinne,” said Zene uncertainly.
Grandma Padgett's glasses glared upon him.
“You'd' be more apt to hear her crying,” she exclaimed. “When did you hear it?”
“Just now. I jumped right off the load.”
Hickory and Henry, anxious to taste the creek, would have moved forward, but were checked by both pairs of hands.
“What direction?”
“I don't feel certain, marm,” said Zene, “but it come like it was from that way through the woods.”
Grandma Padgett stretched her neck out of the carriage toward the right.
“Is that a sled track?” she inquired. “It's gittin' so dim I can't see.”.
Zene said there was a sled track, pointing out what looked like a double footpath with a growth of grass and shrubs along the centre.
“We'll drive in that way,” she at once decided, “and if we get wedged among the trees, we'll have to get out the best way we can.”
Zene turned the gray and white, and led on this new march. Hickory and Henry, backed from the creek without being allowed to dip their mouths, reluctantly thumped the sled track with their shoes, and pretended to distrust every tall stump and every glaring sycamore limb which rose before their sight. Scrubby bushes scraped the bottom of the carriage bed. Now one front wheel rose high over a chunk, and the vehicle rolled and creaked. Zene's wagon cover, like a big white blur, moved steadily in front, and presently Hickory and Henry ran their noses against it, and seemed to relish the knock which the carriage-pole gave the feed-box. Zene had halted to listen.
It was dark in the woods. A rustle could be heard now and then as of some tiny four-footed creature moving the stiff grass; or a twig cracked. The frogs in the creek were tuning their bass-viols. A tree-toad rattled on some unseen trunk, and the whole woods heaved its great lungs in the steady breathing which it never leaves off, but which becomes a roar and a wheeze in stormy or winter weather.
“There isn't anything”—began Grandma Padgett, but between thing and “here” came the distinct laugh of a child.
{Illustration: “WHERE'S BOBADAY?"}
Zene cracked his whip over the gray and the white, and the wagon rumbled ahead rapidly, jarring against roots, and ends of decayed logs, turning short in one direction, and dipping through a long sheltered mud-hole to the very wheel-hubs, brushing against trees and under low branches until guttural remonstrances were scraped out of the cover, and finally descending into an abrupt hollow, with the carriage rattling at its hind wheels.
Grandma Padgett had been through many experiences, but she felt she could truly say to her descendants that she never gave up so entirely for pure joy in her life as when she saw Robert and Corinne sitting in front of a fire built against a great stump, and talking with a fat, silly-looking man who leaned against a cart-wheel.
“Why, Bobaday Padgett,” exclaimed aunt Corinne, “if there isn't our wagon—and Ma Padgett.”
Both children came running to the carriage steps, and their guardian got down, trembling. She put her arms around them, and after a silent hug, shook one in each hand.
The fire illuminated wagon and carriage, J. D. Matthew's cart, and the logs and bushes surrounding them. It flickered on the blue spectacles and gave Grandma Padgett a piercing expression while she examined her culprits.
“Where have you been, while Zene and I hunted up and down in such distress?”
“We's going right back to the tavern soon's he could get us there,” Robert hastened to explain. “It's that funny fellow, J. D., Grandma. But he thought we better go roundabout, so they wouldn't catch us.”
Zene, limping down from his wagon, listened to this lucid statement.
“O Zene,” exclaimed aunt Corinne, “I'm so glad you and Ma Padgett have come! But we knew you wouldn't go on to Brother Tip's without us. Bobaday said you'd wait till we got back, and we ran right straight out of town.”
“You ought to be well sprouted, both of you,” said Grandma Padgett, still trembling as she advanced toward the fire. “Robert Day, break me a switch; break me a good one, and peel the leaves off. So you came across this man again, and he persuaded you to run away with him, did he?”
J. D. Matthews, who had stood up smiling his widest, now moved around to the other side of his cart and crouched in alarm.
Grandma Padgett now saw that the cart was standing level and open, and within it there appeared a nest of brown curls and one slim, babyish hand.
“What's that?” she inquired.
“Why, don't you see, Grandma?” exclaimed Robert, “that's Fairy Carrie that we ran away with. They made her sing at the show. We just went in a minute to see the pig-headed man. I had my gold dollar. And she felt so awful. And we saw her behind the tent.”
“She cried, Ma Padgett,” burst in aunt Corinne, “like her heart was broke, and she couldn't talk at all. Then they were coming out to make her go in again, and we said didn't she want to go to you? You wouldn't let her live with a pig-headed man and have to sing. And she wanted to go, so they came out. And we took hold of her hands and ran. And they chased us. And we couldn't go to the tavern 'cause they chased us the other way: it got dark, and when Bobaday hid us under a house, they chased past us, and we waited, oh! the longest time.”
“And then,” continued Robert, “when we came out, we didn't know which way to go to the tavern, but started roundabout, through fields and over fences, and all, so the show people wouldn't see us. Aunt Corinne was scared. And we stumbled over cows, and dogs barked at us. But we went on till after 'while just as we's slippin' up a back street we met J. D. and the cart, and he was so good! He put the poor little girl in the cart and pushed her. She was so weak she fell down every little bit when we's runnin'. Aunt Corinne and me had to nearly carry her.”
“Well, why didn't he bring you back to the tavern?”
“Grandma, if he had, the show people would been sure to get her! We thought they'd travel on this morning. And we were so tired! He took us to a cabin house, and the woman was real good. The man was real good, too. They had lots of dogs. We got our breakfast and stayed all night. They knew we'd strayed off, but they said J. D. would get us back safe. I gave them the rest of my dollar. Then this morning we all started to town, but J. D. had to go away down the road first, for some eggs and things. And it took us so long we only got this far when it came dusk.”
“J. D. took good care of us,” said aunt Corinne. “Everybody knows him, and he is so funny. The folks say he travels along the pike all through Indiana and Ohio.”
“Well, I'm obliged to him,” said Grandma Padgett, still severely; “we owe him, too, for a good supper and breakfast he gave us the other time we saw him. But I can't make out how he can foot it faster than we can ride, and so git into this State ahead of us.”
Mr. Matthews now came forward, and straightening his bear-like figure, proceeded to smile without apprehension. He cleared his voice and chanted:
Sometimes I take the wings of steam,And on the cars my cart I wheel.And so I came to Richmond townTwo days ago in fair renown.
“Oh,” said Grandma Padgett.
“What's that he's givin' out, marm?” inquired Zene.
“It's a way he has,” she explained. “He talks in verses. This is the pedler that stayed over in that old house with us, near by the Dutch landlord and the deep creek. Were you going to camp here all night?” she inquired of J. D.
“We wanted him to,” coaxed aunt Corinne, “my feet ached so bad. Then we could walk right into town in the morning, and he'd hide Fairy Carrie in his cart till we got to the tavern.”
“Zene,” said Grandma Padgett, “you might as well take out the horses and feed them. They haven't had much chance to-day.”
“Will we stay here, marm?”
“I'll see,” said Grandma Padgett. “Anyhow, I can't stand it in the carriage again right away.”
“Let's camp here,” urged Robert. “J. D.'s got chicken all dressed to broil on the coals, and lots of good things to eat.”
“He wouldn't have any money the last time, and I can't have such doings again. I'm hungry, for I haven't enjoyed a meal since yesterday. Mister, see here,” said Grandma Padgett, approaching the cart.
J. D. moved backwards as she came as if pushed by an invisible pole carried in the brisk grandmother's hands.
“Stand still, do,” she urged, laying a bank bill on his cart. She, snapped her steel purse shut again, put it in her dress pocket, and indicated the bill with one finger. “I don't lay this here for your kindness to the children, you understand. You've got feelings, and know I'm more than obliged. But here are a lot of us, and you buy your provisions, so if you'll let us pay you for some, we'll eat and be thankful. Take the money and put it away.”
Thus commanded, J. D. returned cautiously to the other side of the cart, took the money and thrust it into his vest pocket without looking at it. He then smiled again at Grandma Padgett, as if the thought of propitiating her was uppermost in his mind.
“Now go on with your chicken-broiling,” she concluded, and he went on with it, keeping at a distance from her while she stood by the cart or when she sat down on a log by the fire.
“Here's your stick, Grandma,” said Robert Day, offering her a limb of paw paw, stripped of all its leaves.
Grandma Padgett took it in her hands, reduced its length and tried its limberness.
“If I had given my family such trouble when I's your age,” she said to Corinne and Robert, “I should have been sprouted as I deserved.”
They listened respectfully.
“Folks didn't allow their children to run wild then. They whipped them and kept them in bounds. I remember once father whipped brother Thomas for telling a falsehood, and made welts on his body.”
Corinne and Robert had heard this tale before, but their countenances, put on a piteous expression.
“You ought to have a sprouting,” concluded their guardian as if she did not know how to compromise with her conscience, “but since you meant to do a good turn instead of a bad one”—
“Oh, we never intended to run away, Grandma, and worry you so,” insisted Robert.
“We's just sorry for the little girl,” murmured aunt Corinne.—“Why, I'll let it pass this time. Only never let me know you to do such a thing again.” The paw paw sprout fell to the ground, unwarped by use. Corinne and Robert were hearty in promising never to run away with Fairy Carrie or any other party again.
This serious business completed, the grandmother turned her attention to the child in the cart.
“How sound asleep the little thing is,” she observed, smoothing Fairy Carrie's cheek from dark eye-circle to chin, “and her flesh so cold!”
“She's just slept that way ever since J. D. put her in his cart!” exclaimed aunt Corinne. “We made her open her eyes and take some breakfast in her mouth, but she went to sleep again while she's eatin'.”
“And we let her sleep ever since,” added Bobaday. “It didn't make a bit of difference whether the cart went jolt-erty-jolt over stones or run smooth in the dust. And we shaded her face with bushes.”
“She's not well,” said their experienced elder. “The poor little thing may have some catching disease! It's a pretty face. I wonder whose child she is? You oughtn't to set up your judgment and carry a little child off with you from her friends. I hardly know what we'll do about it.”
“Oh, but they wern't her friends, Ma Padgett,” asserted aunt Corinne solemnly. “She isn't the pig-headed man's little girl. Nor any of them ain't her folks. Bobaday thinks they stole her away.”
“If she'd only wake up and talk,” said Robert, “maybe she could tell us where she lives. But she was afraid of the show people.”
“I should think that was likely,” said Grandma Padgett.
In the heat of his sympathy, he confided to his grandmother what he had seen of the darkened wagon the night they met the Virginians at the large camp.
The paw paw stick had been laid upon the fire. It blackened frowningly. But Robert and Corinne had known many an apple sprout to preach them such a discourse as it had done, without enforcing the subject matter more heavily.
Grandma Padgett reported that she had searched for her missing family in the show tent, though she could not see why any sensible boy or girl would want to enter such a place. And it was clear to her the child might be afraid of such creatures, and very probable that she did not belong to them by ties of blood. But they might prove her lawful guardians and cause a small moving party a great deal of trouble. “But we won't let them find her again,” said aunt Corinne. “Ma, mayn't I keep her for my little sister?—and Bobaday would like to have another aunt.”
“Then we'd be stealing her,” said Grandma Padgett. “If she's a lost child she ought to be restored to her people, and travelling along the 'pike we can't keep the showmen from finding her.”
Bobaday and Corinne gazed pensively at the stump fire, wondering how grown folks always saw the difficulties in doing what you want to do.
J. D. Matthews spread his supper upon a log. He had delicacies which created a very cheerful feeling in the party, such as always rises around the thanksgiving board.
Zene sat at one side of the log by J. D. Matthews. Opposite them the grandmother and her children, camped on chunks covered with shawls and horse-blankets Seeing what an accomplished cook this singular pedler was, how much at home he appeared in the woods, and what a museum he could make of his cart, Zene respectfully kept from laughing at him, except in an indulgent way as the children did.
“I guess we'll stay just where we are until morning,” said Grandma Padgett. “The night's pleasant and warm, and there are just as few mosquitoes here as in the tavern. I didn't sleep last night.” She felt stimulated by the tea, and sufficiently recovered from the languor which follows extreme anxiety, to linger up watching the fire, allowing the children to linger also, while J. D. Matthews put his cupboard to rights after supper.
It was funny to see his fat hands dabbling in dishwater; he laughed as much about—it as aunt Corinne did.
Grandma Padgett removed the sleeping child from his cart, and after trying vainly to make her eat or arouse herself, put her in the bed in the tent, attired in one of aunt Corinne's gowns.
“She was just as helpless as a young baby,” said Grandma Padgett, sitting down again by the fire. “I'll have a doctor look at that child when we go through Richmond. She acts like she'd been drugged.”
J. D. Matthews having finished—his dishwashing, sat down in the shadow some distance from the outspoken woman in spectacles, and her family.
“Now come up here,” urged aunt Corinne, “and sing it all over—what you was singing before Ma Padgett came.”
J. D. ducked his head and chuckled, but remained in his shadow.
“Awh-come on,” urged Robert Day “Zene'll sing 'Barb'ry Allen' if you'll sing your song again.”
Zene glanced uneasily at Grandma Padgett, and said he must look at the horses. “Barb'ry Allen” was a ballad he had indulged the children with when at a distance from her ears.
But the tea and the hour, and her Virginia memories through which that old sing-song ran like the murmur of bees, made Grandma Padgett propitious, and she laid her gracious commands on Zene first, and J. D. Matthews afterwards. So that not only “Barb'ry Allen” was sung, but J. D.'s ditty, into which he plunged with nasal twanging and much personal enjoyment.
“It's why he didn't ever get married,” explained aunt Corinne, constituting herself prologue.
“I should think he needn't make any excuses for that,” remarked Grandma Padgett, smiling.
J. D. sawed back and forth on a log, his silly face rosy with pleasure over the tale of his own woes:
O, I went to a friend's house,The friend says “Come in.Take a hot cup of coffee,O where have you been?”It's down to the Squi-er'sWith a license I went,And my good Sunday clothes on,To marry intent.“O where is the lady?”The good Squi-er, says he.“O she's gone with a wed'werThat is not poor J. D.”“It's now you surprise me,”The friend says a-sigh'n,“J. D. Matthews not married,The sun will not shine!”
“Well, I think she was simple!” exclaimed aunt Corinne in epilogue, “when she might have had a man that washed the dishes and talked poetry all the time.”
Richmond must soon have seemed far behind Grandma Padgett's little caravan, had not Fairy Carrie still drowsed in the carriage, keeping the Richmond adventures always present.
They had parted from J. D. Matthews and the Virginian and his troop. Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen were somewhere on the road ahead, but at a point unknown to Robert and Corinne. They might turn off towards the southwest if all the emigrants agreed to forsake the St. Louis route. No one could tell where J. D. might be rattling his cart.
The afternoon which finally placed Richmond in diminishing perspective, Robert rode with Zene and lived his campaign over again. This was partly necessary because little Carrie lay on the back carriage-seat. But it was entirely agreeable, for Zene wanted to know all the particulars, and showed a flattering, not to say a stimulating anxiety to get a good straight look at Bobaday's prowess in rescuing the distressed. Said Zene:
“But what if her folks never turn up?”
“Then my pa will take her to live with us,” said Robert Day, “and Grandma Padgett will do by her just as she does by aunt Krin and me. She isn't a very lively little girl. I'd hate to play Blind Man with her to be blinded; for seems as if she'd just stand against the wall and go to sleep. But it'll be a good thing to have one still child about the house: aunt Corinne fidgets so. I believe, though, her folks are hunting her. Look what a fuss there was about us I When people's children get lost or stolen, they hunt and hunt, and don't give it up.”
In the carriage, aunt Corinne sitting by her mother, turned her head at every fifth revolution of the wheels, to see how the strange little girl fared.
“Do you s'pose she will ever be clear awake, Ma Padgett?” inquired, aunt Corinne.
“She'll drowse it off by and by,” replied Ma Padgett. “The rubbing I give her this morning, and the stuff the Richmond doctor made her swallow, will bring her out right.”
“She's so pretty,” mused aunt Corinne. “I'd like to have her hair if she never wanted it any more.”
“That's a covetous spirit. But it puts me in mind,” said Grandma Padgett, smiling, “of my sister Adeline and the way she took to get doll's hair.”
Aunt Corinne had often heard of sister Adeline and the doll's hair, but she was glad to hear the brief tale told again in the pleasant drowsing afternoon.
The Indiana landscape was beautiful in tones of green and stretches of foliage. Whoever calls it monotonous has never watched its varying complexions or the visible breath of Indian summer which never departs from it at any season.
“Mother came in from meeting one day,” said Grandma Padgett, “and went into her bedroom and threw her shawl on the bed. She had company to dinner and was in a hurry. It was a fine silk shawl with fringe longer than my hand. Uncle Henry brought it over the mountains as a present. But Adeline come in and saw the fringe and thought what nice doll hair it would make. So by and by mother has an errand in the bedroom, and she sees her shawl travelling down behind the bed, and doesn't know what to think. Then she hears something snip, snip, and lifts up the valance and looks under the bed, and there sets Adeline cutting the fringe off her shawl! She had it half cut off.”
“And what did Grandma do then?” aunt Corinne omitted not to ask.
“Oh, she punished Adeline. But that never had any effect on her. Adeline was a funny child,” said Grandma Padgett, retrospective tenderness showing through her blue glasses. “I remember once she got to eatin' brown paper, and mother told her it would kill her if she didn't quit it. Adeline—made up her mind she was going to eat brown paper if it did kill her. She never doubted that it would come true as mother said. But she prepared to die, and made her will and divided her things. Mother found it out and put a stop to the business. I remember,” said Grandma Padgett, laughing, “that I was disappointed, because I had to give back what she willed to me! yet I didn't want Adeline to die. She was a lively child. She jumped out of windows and tom-boyed around, but everybody liked her. Once I had some candy and divided fair enough, I thought, but Adeline after she ate up what she had, said I'd be sorry if I didn't give her more, because she was going, to die. It worked so well on my feelings that next time I tried that plan on Adeline's feelings, and told her if she didn't do something I wanted her to doshe'dbe sorry; for I was going to die. She said she knew it; everybody was going to die some day, and she couldn't help it and wasn't going to be sorry for any such thing! Poor Adeline: many a year she's been gone, and I'm movin' further away from the old home.”
Grandma Padgett lifted the lines and slapped them on the backs of old Hickory and Henry. Rousing themselves from coltish recollections of their own, perhaps, the horses began to trot.
{Illustration: THE LAWYER.}
In Indiana, some reaches of the 'pike were built on planks instead of broken stone, and gave out a hollow rumble instead of a flinty roar. The shape and firmness of the road-bed were the same, but the ends of boards sometimes cropped out along the sides. In this day, branches of the old national thoroughfare penetrate to every part of the Hoosier State. The people build 'pikes instead of what are called dirt roads. There are, of course, many muddy lanes and by-ways. But they have some of the best drives which have been lifted out of the Mississippi Valley.
Though the small caravan had lost time, and Son Tip might be waiting at the Illinois line before they reached that point, Grandma Padgett said they would all go to morning meeting in the town where they stopped Saturday night, and only drive a short piece on Sunday afternoon. She hated to be on expense, but they had much to return thanks for; and the Israelites made Sabbath day's journeys when they were moving.
The first Sunday—which seemed so remote now—had been partially spent in a grove where they camped for dinner, and Grandma Padgett read the Bible, and made Bobaday and Corinne answer their catechism. But this June Sunday was to be of a thanksgiving character. And they spent it in Greenfield.
At Cambridge City little Carrie roused sufficiently to eat with evident relish. But no such recollection of Dublin, Jamestown called Jimtown for short, by some inhabitants, and only distinguished by its location from another Jamestown in the State—-Knightstown and Charlottesville, remained to her as remained to Bobaday and Corinne. The Indiana village did not differ greatly from the Ohio village situated on the 'pike. There were always the church with a bonny little belfry, and the schoolhouse more or less mutilated as to its weather boarding. The 'pike was the principal street, and such houses as sat at right angles to it, looked lonesome, and the dirt roads weedy or dusty.
Greenfield was a country seat and had a court house surrounded by trees. It looked long and straggling in the summer dusk. Zene, riding ahead to secure lodgings, came back as far as the culvert to tell Grandma Padgett there was no room at the tavern Court, was session, and the lawyers on the circuit filled the house. But there was another place, near where they now halted, that sometimes took in travellers for accommodation's sake. He pointed it out, a roomy building with a broad flight of leg steps leading up to the front doors. Zene said it was not a tavern, but rather nicer than a tavern. He had already prevailed on the man and woman keeping it to take in his party.
Robert and aunt Corinne scampered up the log steps and Grandma Padgett led Fairy Carrie; after them. A plain tidy woman met them at the door and took them into a square room. There were the homemade carpet, the centre-table with daguerreotypes standing open and glaring such light as they had yet to reflect, samplers and colored prints upon the walls, but there was also a strange man busy with some papers at the table.
His hat stood beside him on the floor, and he dropped the sorted papers into it. He was, as Grandma Padgett supposed, one of the lawyers on the circuit. After looking up, he kept on sorting and folding his papers.
The woman went out to continue her supper-getting. In a remote part of the house bacon could be heard hissing over the fire. Robert and Corinne sat upright on black chairs, but their guardian put Carrie on a padded lounge.
The little creature was dressed in aunt Corinne's clothing, giving it a graceful shape in spite of the broad tucks in sleeve, skirt and pantalet, which kept it from draggling over her hands or on the floor, She leaned against the wall, gazing around her with half-awakened interest. The dark circles were still about her eyes, but her pallor was flushed with a warmer color, Grandma Padgett pushed the damp curls off her forehead.
“Are you hungry, Sissy?” she inquired.
“No, ma'am,” replied Carrie. “Yes, ma'am,” she added, after a moment's reflection.
“She actually doesn't know,” said Bobaday, sitting down on the lounge near Carrie. Upon this, aunt Corinne forsook her own black chair and sat on the other side of their charge.
“Do you begin to remember, now?” inquired Robert Day, smoothing the listless hands on Carrie's lap.
“How we run off with you—you know,” prompted aunt Corinne, dressing a curl over her finger.
The child looked at each of them, smiling.
“Don't pester her,” said Grandma Padgett, taking some work out of her dress pocket and settling herself by a window to make use of the last primrose light in the sky.
“If we don't begin to make her talk, she'll forget how,” exclaimed aunt Corinne. “Can't you 'member anything about your father and mother now, Carrie?”
{Illustration: THE “YOUNG MAN WHO SOLD TICKETS” APPEARS AT THE DOOR.}
The man who was sorting his papers at the table, turned an attentive eye and ear toward the children. But neither Bobaday nor Corinne considered that he broke up the family privacy. They scarcely noticed him.
“Grandma,” murmured Carrie vaguely, turning her eyes toward their guardian by the window.
“Yes, that's Grandma,” said Bobaday. “But don't you know where your own pa and ma are?”
“Papa,” whispered Carrie, like a baby trying the words. “Mamma. Papa—mamma.”
“Yes, dear,” exclaimed aunt Corinne. “Where do they live? She's big enough to know that if she knows anything.”
“Let's get her to sing a song,” suggested Bobaday. “If she can remember a song, she can remember what happened before they made her sing.”
“That papa?” said Carrie, looking at the stranger by the table.
“No,” returned aunt Corinne, deigning a glance his way. “That's only a gentleman goin' to eat supper here. Sing, Carrie. Now, Bobaday Padgett,” warned aunt Corinne, shooting her whisper behind the curled head, “don't you go and scare her by sayin' anything about that pig-man.”
“Don't you scare her yourself,” returned Robert with a touch of indignation. “You've got her eyes to stickin' out now. Sing a pretty tune, Carrie. Come on, now.”
The docile child slid off the lounge and stood against it, piping directly one of her songs. Yet while her trembling treble arose, she had a troubled expression, and twisted her fingers about each other.
In an instant this expression became one of helpless terror. She crowded back against the lounge and tried to hide herself behind Bobaday and Corinne.
They looked toward the door, and saw standing there the young man who sold tickets at the entrance of the pig-headed individual's show. His hands were in his pockets, but he appeared ready to intone forth:
“Walk right in, ladies and gentlemen, and hear Fairy Carrie, the child vocalist!” And the smoky torch was not needed to reveal his satisfaction in standing just where he did.
Though the dissipated looking young man only stood at the door a moment, and then walked out on the log steps at a sauntering pace, he left dismay behind him. Aunt Corinne flew to her mother, imploring that Carrie be hid. Robert Day stood up before the child, frowning and shaking his head.
“All the pig-headed folks will be after her,” exclaimed aunt Corinne. “They'll come right into this room so soon as that fellow tells them. Le's run out the back way, Ma Padgett!”
Grandma Padgett, who had been giving the full strength of her spectacles to the failing light and her knitting, beheld this excitement with disapproval.
“You'll have my needles out,” she objected. “What pig-headed folks are after what? Robert, have you hurt Sissy?”
“Why, Grandma Padgett, didn't you see the doorkeeper looking into the room?”
“Some person just looked in—person they appear to object to,” said the strange man, giving keen attention to what was going forward. “Are these your own children, ma'am?”
Grandma Padgett rolled up her knitting, and tipped her head slightly back to bring the stranger well under her view.
“This girl and the boy belong to my family,” she replied.
“But whose is the little girl on the lounge?”
“I don't know,” replied Grandma Padgett, somewhat despondently. “I wish I did. She's a child that seems to be lost from her friends.”
“But you can't take her away and give her to the show people again,” exclaimed aunt Corinne, turning on this stranger with nervous defiance. “She's more ours than she is yours, and that ugly man scared her so she couldn't do anything but cry or go to sleep. If brother Tip was here he wouldn't let them have her.”
“That man that just went out, is a showman,” explained Robert Day, relying somewhat on the stranger for aid and re-inforcement. “She was in the show that he tended door for. They were awful people. Aunt Krin and I slipped her off with us.”
“That's kidnapping. Stealing, you know,” commented the stranger.
“They'dstolen her,” declared Bobaday.
“How do you know?”
“Look how 'fraid she was! I peeped into their wagon in the woods, and as soon as she opened her eyes and saw the man with the pig's head, she began to scream, and they smothered her up.”
Grandma Padgett was now sitting on the lounge with Carrie lifted into her lap. Her voice was steady, but rather sharp. “This child's in a fit! Robert Day, run to the woman of the house and tell her to bring hot water as soon as she can.”
During the confusion which followed, and while Carrie was partially undressed, rubbed, dipped, and dosed between her set teeth, the stranger himself went out to the log steps and stood looking from one end of the street to the other. The dissipated young man appeared nowhere in the twilight.
Returning, the lawyer found Grandma Padgett holding her patient wrapped in shawls. The landlady stood by, much concerned, and talking about a great many remedies beside such as she held in her hands. Aunt Corinne and Robert Day maintained the attitude of guards, one on each side of the door.
Carrie was not only conscious again, but wide awake and tingling through all her little body. Her eyes had a different expression. They saw everything, from the candle the landlady held over her, to the stranger entering: they searched the walls piteously, and passed the faces of Bobaday and aunt Corinne as if they by no means recognized these larger children.
“I want my mamma!” she wailed. Tears ran down her face and Grandma Padgett wiped them away. But Carrie resisted her hand.
“Go away!” she exclaimed. “You aren't my mamma!”
“Poor little love!” sighed the landlady, who had picked up some information about the child.
“And you aren't my mamma!” resented Carrie. “I want my mamma to come to her little Rose.”
“Says her name's Rose,” said Grandma Padgett, exchanging a flare of her glasses for a startled look from the landlady.
“She says her name's Rose,” repeated the landlady, turning to the lawyer as a general public who ought to be informed. Robert and Corinne began to hover between the door and the lounge, vigilant at both extremes of their beat.
“Rose,” repeated the lawyer, bending forward to inspect the child. “Rose what? Have you any other name, my little girl?”
“I not your little girl,” wept their excited patient. “I'm my mamma's little girl. Go away! you're an ugly papa.”
Bobaday and Corinne chuckled at this accusation. Aunt Corinne could not bring herself to regard the lawyer as an ally. If he wished to play a proper part he should have gone out and driven the doorkeeper and all the rest of those show-people from Greenfield. Instead of that, he stood about, listening.
“I haven't even seen such people,” murmured the landlady in reply to a whispered question from Grandma Padgett. “There was a young man came in to ask if we had more room, but I didn't like his looks and told him no, we had no more. Court-times we can fill our house if we want to. But I'm always particular. We don't take shows at all. The shows that come through here are often rough. There was a magic-lantern man we let put up with us. But circuses and such things can go to the regular tavern, says I. And if the regular tavern can't accommodate them, it's only twenty mile to Injunop'lis.”
“I was afraid they might have got into the house,” said Grandma Padgett. “And I wouldn't know what to do. I couldn't give her up to them again, when the bare sight throws her into spasms, unless I was made to do it.”
“You couldn't prove any right to her,” observed the lawyer.
“No, I couldn't,” replied Grandma Padgett, expressing some injury in her tone. “But on that account ought I to let her go to them that would mistreat her?”
“She may be their child,” said the lawyer. “People have been known to maltreat their children before. You only infer that they stole her.”
Aunt Corinne told her nephew in a slightly guarded whisper, that she never had seen such a mean man as that one was.
“They ought to prove it before they get her, then,” said Grandma Padgett.
“Yes,” he assented. “They ought to prove it.”
“And they must be right here in the place,” she continued. “I'm afraid I'll have trouble with them.”
“We could go on to-night,” exclaimed Robert Day. “We could go on to Indianapolis, and that's where the governor lives, Zene says; and when we told the governor, he'd put the pig-headed folks in jail.” Small notice being taken of this suggestion by the elders, Robert and Corinne bobbed their heads in unison and discussed it in whispers together.
The woman of the house locked up that part which let out upon the log steps, before she conducted her guests to supper. She was a partisan of Grandma Padgett's.
At table the brown-eyed child whom Grandma Padgett still held upon her lap, refused food and continued to demand her mother. She leaned against the old lady's shoulder seeing every crack in the walls, every dish upon the cloth, the lawyer who sat opposite, and the concerned faces of Bobaday and Corinne. Supper was too good to be slighted, in spite of Carrie's dangerous position. The man of the house was a Quaker, and while his wife stood up to wait on the table, he repeatedly asked her in a thee-and-thou language highly edifying to aunt Corinne, for certain pickles and jams and stuffed mangoes; and as she brought them one after the other, he helped the children plentifully, twinkling his eyes at them. He was a delicious old fellow; as good in his way as the jams.
“And won't thee have some-in a sasser?” he inquired tenderly of Carrie, “and set up and feed thyself? Thee ought to give thy grandame a chance to eat her bite—don't thee be a selfish little dear.”
“I want my mamma,” responded Carrie, at once taking this twinkle-eyed childless father into her confidence. “I'm waiting for my mamma. When she comes she'll give me my supper and put me to bed.”
“Thee's a big enough girl to wait ort thyself,” said the Quaker, not understanding the signs his wife made to him.
“She doesn't live at your house,” pursued the child. “She lives at papa's house.”
“Where is papa's house?” inquired the lawyer helping himself to bread as if that were the chief object of his thoughts.
“It's away off. Away over the woods.”
“And what's papa's name?”
Carrie appeared to consider the questioner rather than the question, and for some unexpressed reason, remained silent.
“Mother,” said the Quaker from the abundant goodness of his heart, “doesn't thee mind that damson p'serve thee never let's me have unless I take the ag'y and shake for it? Some of that would limber a little girl's tongue, doesn't thee think?”
“It's in the far pantry on a high shelf,” said the woman of the house, demurring slightly.
“I can reach it down.”
“No, I'll bring it myself. The jars are too crowded on that shelf for a man's hands to be turned loose among 'em.”
The Quaker smiled, sparkling considerably under his gray eyebrows while his wife took another light and went after the damson preserve. She had been gone but a moment when knocking began at the front door, and the Quaker rose at once from his place to answer it.
{Illustration: “COME TO MAMMA."}
Robert Day and Corinne looked at each other in apprehension. They pictured a fearful procession coming in. Even their guardian gave an anxious start. She parted her lips to beg the Quaker not to admit any one, but the request was absurd.
Their innocent host piloted straight to the dining-room a woman whom Robert and Corinne knew directly. They had seen her in the show, and recalled her appearance many a time afterwards when speculating about Carrie's parents.
“Here you are!” she exclaimed to the child in a high key. “My poor little pet! Come to mamma!”