Neither William Sebastian, the Quaker landlord, nor his wife, returning with the damson preserves in her hand—not even Grandma Padgett and her family, looked at Fairy Carrie more anxiously than the lawyer.
“Is this your mother, Sissy?” inquired Grandma Padgett.
“No,” replied the child; A blank, stupid expression replacing her excitement. “Yes. Mamma?”
The woman sat down and took Carrie upon her lap, twisting her curls and caressing her.
“Where have you been, frightening us all to death!” she exclaimed. “The child is sick; she must have some drugs to quiet her.”
“She's just come out of a spasm,” said Grandma Padgett distantly. “Seems as if a young man scared her.”
“Yes; that was Jarvey,” said the woman. “'E found her here. Carrie was always afraid of Jarvey after he-tried to teach her wire-walking, and let her fall. Jarvey would've fetched her right away with him, But 'e knows I don't like to 'ave 'im meddle with her now.”
“She says her name's Rose,” observed the wife of William Sebastian, taking no care to veil her suspicion.
“'Tis Rose,” replied the woman indifferently, passing her hand in repeated strokes down the child's face as it was pressed to her shoulder. “The h'other's professional—Fairy Carrie. We started 'igher. I never expected to come down with my child to such a miserable little combination. But we've 'ad misfortunes. Her father died coming over. We're English. We 'ad good engagements in the Provinces, and sometimes played in London. The manager as fetched us over, failed to keep his promises, and I had no friends 'ere. I had to do what I could.”
An actual resemblance to Carrie appeared in the woman's face. She wiped tears from, the dark rings under her eyes.
William Sebastian's wife rested her knuckles on the table, still regarding Carrie's mother with perplexed distrust.
While returning none of the caresses she received, the child lay quite docile and submissive.
“Well,” said Grandma Padgett, still distantly “folks bring up their children different. There's gypsies always live in tents, and I suppose show-people always expect to travel with shows. I don't know anything about it. But I do know when that child came to me she'd been dosed nearly to death with laudanum, or some sleepin' drug, and didn't really come to her senses till after her spasm.”
The woman cast a piteous expression at her judge.
“She's so nervous, poor pet! Perhaps I'm in the 'abit of giving her too much. But she lives in terror of the company we 'ave to associate with, and I can't see her nerves be racked.”
“Thee ought to stop such wrong doings,” pronounced William Sebastian, laying his palm decidedly on the table. “Set theeself to some honest work and put the child to school. Her face is a rebuke to us that likes to feel at peace.”
The woman glanced resentfully at him.
“The child is gifted,” she maintained. “I'm going to make a hartist of her.”
She smoothed Carrie's wan hands, and, as if noticing her borrowed clothing for the first time, looked about the room for the tinsel and gauze.
{Illustration: THE CHILD LAY QUITE DOCILE AND SUBMISSIVE.}
“The things she had on her when she come to us,” said Grandma Padgett, “were literally gone to nothing. The children had run so far and rubbed over fences and sat in the grass. I didn't even think it was worth while to save the pieces; and I put my least one's clothes on her for some kind of a covering.
“It was her concert dress,” said the woman, regarding aunt Corinne's pantalets with some contempt. “I suppose I hought to thank you, but since she was hinticed away, I can't. When one 'as her feelings 'arrowed up for nearly a week as mine have been 'arrowed, one can't feel thankful. I will send these 'ere things back by Jarvey. Well, ladies and gentlemen, let me bid you good evening. The performance 'as already begun and we professionals cannot shirk business.”
“You give an exhibition in Greenfield to-night, do you?” inquired the lawyer.
“Yes, sir,” replied the woman, standing with Carrie in arms. She had some difficulty in getting at her pocket, but threw him a handbill.
Then passing out through the hall, she shut the front door behind her.
There were two other front doors to the house, though only the central one was in constant use, being left open in the summer weather, excepting on occasions such as the present, when William Sebastian's wife thought it should be locked. One of the other front doors opened into the sitting-room, but was barred with a tall bureau. The third let into a square room devoted to the lumber accumulations of the house. A bar and shelves for decanters remained there, but these William Sebastian had never permitted to be used since his name was painted on the sign.
Mrs. Sebastian felt a desire to confuse the outgoing woman by the three doors and imprison her in the old store room.
“I don't think the child's hers,” exclaimed Mrs. Sebastian.
“Thee isn't Solomon,” observed the Quaker, twinkling at his wife. “Thee cannot judge who the true mother may be.”
“She shouldn't got in here if I'd had the keeping of the door,” continued Mrs. Sebastian. “I may not be Solomon, but I think I could keep the varmints out of my own chicken house.”
Grandma Padgett set her glasses in a perplexed stare at the door.
“She didn't let us say good-by to Fairy Carrie,” exclaimed aunt Corinne indignantly, “and kept her face hid away all the time so she couldn't look at us. I'd hate to have such a ma!”
“She'll whip the poor little thing for running off with us, when she gets her away,” said Robert Day, listening for doleful sounds.
“Well, what does thee think of this business?” inquired William Sebastian of the lawyer who was busying himself drawing squares on the tablecloth with a steel fork. “It ought to come in thy line. Thee deals with criminals and knows the deceitfulness of our human hearts. What does thee say to the woman?”
The lawyer smiled as he laid down his fork, and barely mentioned the conflicting facts:
“She took considerable pains to tell something about herself: more than was necessary. But if they kidnapped the child, they are dangerously bold and confident in exhibiting and claiming her.”
Aunt Corinne occupied with her mother a huge apartment over the sitting-room, in which was duplicated the fireplace below. At this season the fireplace was closed with a black board on which paraded balloon-skirted women cut out of fashion plates.
The chimneys were built in two huge stacks at the gable-ends of the house, outside the weather boarding: a plan the architects of this day utterly condemn. The outside chimney was, however, as far beyond the stick-and-clay stacks of the cabin, as our fire-stone flues are now beyond it. This house with log steps no longer stands as an old landmark by the 'pike side in Greenfield. But on that June morning it looked very pleasant, and the locust-trees in front of it made the air heavy with perfume. There is no flower like the locust for feeding honey to the sense of smell. Half the bees from William Sebastian's hives were buzzing overhead, when Bobaday and aunt Corinne sat down by Zene on the log steps to unload their troubles. All three were in their Sunday clothes. Zene had even greased his boots, and looked with satisfaction on the moist surfaces which he stretched forth to dry in the sun.
He had not seen Carrie borne away, but he had been to the show afterwards, and heard her sing one of her songs. He told the children she acted like she never see a thing before her, and would go dead asleep if they didn't stick pins in her like they did in a woman he seen walkin' for money once. Robert was fain to wander aside on the subject of this walking woman, but aunt Corinne kept to Fairy Carrie, and made Zene tell every scrap of information he had about her.
“After I rubbed the horses this mornin',” he proceeded, “I took a stroll around the burg, and their tent and wagon's gone!”
“Gone!” exclaimed aunt Corinne. “Clear out of town?”
Zene said he allowed so. He could show the children where the tent and wagon stood, and it was bare ground now. He had also discovered the time-honored circus-ring, where every summer the tinseled host rode and tumbled. But under the circumstances, a circus-ring had no charms.
“Then they've got her,” said Bobaday. “We'll never see the pretty little thing again. If I'd been a man I wouldn't let that woman have her, like Grandma Padgett did. Grown folks are so funny. I did wish some grand people would come in the night and say she was their child, and make the show give her up.”
Aunt Corinne arose to fly to her mother and Mrs. Sebastian with the news. But the central door opening on the instant and Mrs. Sebastian, her husband and guest coming out, aunt Corinne had not far to fly.
“The woman is a stealer,” she added to her breathless recital. “She didn't even send my things back.”
“She's welcome to them,” said Grandma Padgett, shaking her head, “but I feel for that child, whether the rightful owners has her or not.”
“This is Lord's Day,” said William Sebastian to the children, “along the whole length of the pike, and across the whole breadth of the country. Thy little friend will get her First Day blessing.”
He wore a gray hat, half-high in the crown, and a gray coat which flapped his calves when he walked. His trousers were of a cut which reached nearly to his armpits, but this fact was kept from the public by a vest crawling well toward his knees. Yet he looked beautifully tidy and well-dressed. His wife, who was not a Quaker, had by no means such an air of simple grandeur.
Grandma Padgett and aunt Corinne, somewhat reluctantly followed by Zene, were going to the Methodist church. Already its bell was filling the air. But Robert hung back and asked if he might not go to Quaker meeting.
“Thee couldn't sit and meditate,” said William Sebastian.
Bobaday assured William Sebastian he could sit very still, and he always meditated. When he ran after his grandmother to get her consent, it occurred to him to find out from Zene how the pig-headed man was, and if he looked as ugly as ever. But aunt Corinne scorned the question, and quite flew af him for asking it.
The Methodist services Robert knew by heart: the open windows, the high pulpit where the preacher silently knelt first thing, hymn books rustling cheerfully, the hymn given out two lines at a time to be sung by the congregation, then the kneeling of everybody and the prayer, more singing, and the sermon, perhaps followed by an exhortation, when the preacher talked loud enough for the boys sitting out on the fence to hear every word. Perhaps a few children whispered, or a baby cried and its mother took it out. Everybody seemed happy and astir. After church there was so much handshaking that the house emptied very slowly.
But on his return he described the Quaker meeting to aunt Corinne.
“They all sat and sat,” said Bobaday. “It was a little bit of a house and not half so many folks could get in it as sit in the corners by the pulpit in Methodist meeting. And they sat and sat, and nobody said a word or gave out a hymn. The women looked at the cracks in the floor. You could hear everything outdoors. After a long time they all got up and shook hands. Mrs. Sebastian said to Mr. Sebastian when we came away, 'The spirit didn't appear to move anybody this morning.' And he said, 'No: but it was a blessed meeting.'”
“Didn't your legs cramp?” inquired aunt Corinne.
“Yes; and my nose tickled and I wanted to sneeze.”
“But you dursn't move your thumb even. That lawyer that ate supper here last night would like such a meeting, wouldn't he?”
The lawyer was coming up the log steps while Robert spoke of him. And with him was a lady who looked agitated, and whom he had to assist.
Robert and Corinne, at the open sitting-room window, looked at each other with quick apprehension.
“Aunt Krin,that'sher mother,” said aunt Krin's nephew. His young relative grasped his arm and exclaimed in an awe-struck whisper:
“Bobaday Padgett!”
Both children regarded the strange lady with breathless interest when the lawyer seated her in the room. They silently classed her among the rich, handsome and powerful people of the earth. She had what in later years they learned to call refinement, but at that date they could give it no name except niceness. When Grandma Padgett and the landlord's wife were summoned to the room, she grew even younger and more elegant in appearance, though her face was anxious and her eyes were darkened by crying.
“This is Mrs. Tracy from Baltimore,” said the lawyer. “She was in Chicago yesterday, and I telegraphed for her a half-hour or so before the child was taken out of the house. She came as far as Indianapolis, and found no Pan Handle train, this morning, so she was obliged to get a carriage and drive over. Mrs. Sebastian, will you be kind enough to set out something for her to eat as soon as you can? She has not thought of eating since she started. And Mrs.—what did I understand your name to be?”
{Illustration: “THIS IS LORD'S DAY,” SAID WILLIAM SEBASTIAN.}
“Padgett,” replied the children's guardian.
“Yes; Mrs. Padgett. Mrs. Padgett, my client is hunting a lost child, and hearing this little girl was with you some days, she would like to make some inquiries.”
“But the child's taken clear away!” exclaimed Grandma Padgett.
“If you drove out from Injunop'lis,” said the Quaker's wife, “you must have met the show-wagon on the 'pike.”
“The show-wagon took to a by-road,” observed the lawyer. “We have men tracking it now.”
“I knew it wasn't right for them to carry off that child,” said the Quaker's wife, “and if I'd tended the door they wouldn't carried her off.”
“It was best not to arouse their suspicions before she could be identified,” said the lawyer. “It's easy enough to take her when we know she is the child we want.”
“Maybe so,” said the Quaker's wife.
“Easy enough. The vagabonds can't put themselves beyond arrest before we can reach them, and on the other hand, they could make a case against us if we meddle with them unnecessarily. Since Mrs. Tracy came West a couple of weeks ago, and since she engaged me in her cause, we have had a dozen wrong parties drawn up for examination; children of all ages and sizes.”
“Did she,” inquired Mrs. Tracy, bringing her chair close to Grandma Padgett and resting appealing eyes on the blue glasses, “have hair that curled? Rather long hair for a child of her years.”
“Yes'm,” replied Grandma Padgett with dignified tenderness. “Long for a child about five or six, as I took her to be. But she was babyish for all that.”
“Yes—oh, yes!” said Mrs. Tracy.
“And curly. How long since you lost her?”
The lady from Baltimore sobbed on her handkerchief, but recovered with a resolute effort, and replied:
“It was nearly three months ago. She was on the street with her nurse, and was taken away almost miraculously. We could not find a trace. Her papa is dead, but I have always kept his memory alive to her. My friends have helped me search, but it has seemed day after day as if I could not bear the strain any longer.”
Grandma Padgett took off her glasses and polished them.
“I know how you feel,” she observed, glancing at Robert Day and Corinne. “I had a scare at Richmond, in this State.”
“Are these your children?”
“My youngest and my grandson. It was their notion of running away with the little girl, and their gettin' lost, that put me to such a worry:”
Mrs. Tracy extended her hands to Bobaday and aunt Corinne, drawing one to each side of her, and made the most minute inquiries about Fairy Carrie. She knew that the child had called herself Rose, and that she had been in a partially stupified state during her stay with the little caravan. But when Robert mentioned the dark circles in the child's face, and her crying behind the tent, the lady turned white and leaned back, closing her eyes and groping for a small yellow bottle in her pocket. Having smelled of this, she recovered herself.
But aunt Corinne, in spite of her passionate sympathy, could barely keep from tittering at the latter action. Though the smelling bottle was yellow, instead of a dull blue, like the one Ma Padgett kept in the top bureau drawer at home, aunt Corinne recognized her enemy and remembered the time she hunted out that treasure and took a long, strong, tremendous snuff at it, expecting to revel in odors of delight. Her head tingled again while she thought about it; she felt a thousand needles running through her nose, and saw herself sitting on the floor shedding tears. How anybody could sniff at a hartshorn bottle and find it a consolation or restorative under any circumstances, she could not understand.
Mrs. Sebastian, in her First Day clothes, and unwilling to lose a word of what was going on in the sitting-room, had left the early dinner to her assistant. But she brought in a cup of strong tea, and some cream toast, begging the bereaved mother to stay her stomach with that until the meal's victuals was ready. Mrs. Tracy appeared to have forgotten that her stomach needed staying, but she thanked the landlady and drank the tea as if thirsty, between her further inquiries about the child.
“Are you not sure,” she asked the lawyer, “that we are on the right track this time?”
He said he was not sure, but indications were better than they had been before.
“I don't wish to reproach you,” said Mrs. Tracy, “but it is a fearful thought to me, that they may be poisoning my child with opiates again and injuring her perhaps for life. You might have detained her.”
“That's what I've said right along,” exclaimed Mrs. Sebastian.
“But there was that woman who pretended to be her rightful mother,” observed Grandma Padget, who, though not obliged to set up any defence, wanted the case seen in all its bearings. “Theresheset, easy and deliberate, tellingherstory, how the little thing's father died comin' over the water, and how hard, it was for her to do the right thing by the child. She maintained she only dosed the child to keep her from sufferin'. I didn't believe her, but we had nothing to set up against her.”
Mrs. Tracy became as erect and fierce in aspect as such a delicate creature could become. The long veil of crape which hung from her bonnet and swept the floor, emphasizing the blackness of all her other garments, trembled as she rose.
“Why am I sitting here and waiting for anything, when that woman is claiming my child for her own? The idea of anybody's daring to own my child! It is more cruel than abuse. I never thought of their being able to teach her to forget me—that they could confuse her mamma with another person in her mind!”
“You're tired out,” said the lawyer, “and matters are moving just as rapidly as if you were chasing over all the roads in Hancock County. You must quiet yourself, ma'am, or you'll break down.”
Mrs. Tracy made apparent effort to quiet herself. She took hold of Grandma Padgett's arm when they were called out to dinner. Robert walked on the other side of her, having her hand on his shoulder and aunt Corinne went behind, carrying the end of the crape veil as if Fairy Carrie's real mother could thus receive support and consolation through the back of the head.
Nobody was more concerned about her trouble than William Sebastian. And he remembered more tempting pickles and jellies than had ever been on the table before at once. Yet the dinner was soon over.
Grandma Padgett said she had intended to go a piece on the road that afternoon anyhow, but she could not feel easy in her mind to go very far until the child was found. Virginia folks and Marylanders were the same as neighbors. If Mrs. Tracy would take a seat in the carriage, they would make it their business to dally along the road and meet the word the men out searching were to bring in. Mrs. Tracy clung to Grandma Padgett's arm as if she knew what a stay the Ohio neighbors had always found this vigorous old lady. The conveyance which brought her from Indianapolis had been sent back. She was glad to be with, the Padgetts. No railroad trains would pass through until next day. William Sebastian helped her up the carriage steps, and aunt Corinne set down reverently on the back seat beside her. Zene was already rumbling ahead with the wagon. Mrs. Sebastian came down the steps of log and put a hearty lunch in. It was particularly for the child they hoped to find.
{Illustration: MRS. TRACY MAKES INQUIRIES.}
“Make her eat something,” she counselled the mother. “She hardly tasted a bite of supper last night, and according to all accounts, she ain't in hands that understands feedin' children now.”
“The Lord prosper all thy undertakings,” said William Sebastian, “and don't thee forget to let us know what hour we may begin to rejoice with thee.”
The lawyer touched his hat as Hickory and Henry stepped away on the plank 'pike. He remained in Greenfield, and was to ride after them if any news came in about Fairy Carrie.
However we may spend our Sabbath, it is different from the other days of the week. I have often thought the little creatures of field and woods knew the difference. They run or sing with more gladness and a less business-like air. The friskiest lambs, measuring strength with each other by stiff-legged jumps, are followed by gentle bleats from their mothers, and come back after a frolic to meditate and switch their tails. The fleecy roll of a lamb's tail, and the dimples which seem to dint its first coat, the pinkness of its nose, and the drollery of its eye, are all worth watching under a cloudless Sunday sky.
As the carriage and wagon rolled along the 'pike, they met other vehicles full of people driving for an outing, or going to afternoon Sunday-school held in schoolhouses along the various by-roads.
Mrs. Tracy leaned forward every time a buggy passed the wagon, and scanned its occupants until they turned towards the right to pass Grandma Padgett.
The first messenger they met entered on the 'pike from a cross-road some distance ahead of them, but was checked in his canter toward Greenfield by Zene, who stopped the wagon for a parley. Mrs. Tracy was half irritated by such officiousness, and Grandma Padgett herself intended to call Zene to account, when he left the white and gray and came limping to the carriage at the rider's side. However, the news he helped to bring, and the interest he took in it, at once excused him. This man, scouring the country north and south since early morning, had heard nothing of the show-wagon.
It might be somewhere in the woods, or jogging innocently along a dirt road. It was no longer an object to the searchers. He believed the woman and child had left it, intending to rejoin it at some appointed place when all excitement was over. He said he thought he had the very woman and child back here a piece, though they might give him the slip before he could bring anybody to certainly identify them.
“My little one 'give me the slip'!” exclaimed Mrs. Tracy indignantly.
The man said his meaning was, she might be slipped off by her keeper.
“Where have you got them?” inquired Grandma Padgett.
“He saw 'em goin' into Sunday-school, marm,” explained Zene. “There's a meetin'-house over yonder three or four mile,” pointing with his whip.
“It's the unlikeliest place that ever was,” said the messenger, polishing his horse's wet neck. “And I suppose that's what the woman thought when she slipped in there. If I hadn't happened by in the nick of time I wouldn't mistrusted. She didn't see me. She was goin' up the steps, with her back to the road, and the meetin'-house sets a considerable piece from the fence. They was all singin' loud enough to drown a horse's feet in the dust.”
“And both were like the descriptions you had?” said Mrs. Tracy.
“So nigh like that I half-pulled up and had a notion to go in and see for myself. Then, thinks I, you better wait and bring-the ones that would know for sure. There ain't no harm in that.”
Before the mother could speak again, Grandma Padgett told the man to turn back and direct them, and Zene to fall behind the carriage with his load. He could jog leisurely in the wake of the carriage, to avoid getting separated from it: that would be all he need attempt. She took up her whip to touch Hickory and Henry.
After turning off on the by-road, Grandma Padgett heard Zene leisurely jogging in the wake of the carriage, and remembered for a moment, with dismay, the number of breakable things in his load. He drove all the way to the meeting-house with the white and gray constantly rearing their noses from contact with the hind carriage curtains; up swells, when the road wound through stump-bordered sward, and down into sudden gullies, when all his movables clanged and rumbled, as if protesting against the unusual speed they had to endure. Zene was as anxious to reach the meeting-house as the man who cantered ahead.
They drew up to where it basked on the rising ground, an old brown frame with lichens crusting the roof. There were two front doors, a flight of wooden steps leading up to each, and three high windows along the visible side. All these stood open letting out a pleasant hum, through which the cracked voice of an old man occasionally broke. No hump of belfry stood upon its back. The afternoon sun was the bell which called that neighborhood together for Sunday-school. And this unconscious duty performed, the afternoon sun now brightened the graves which crowded to the very fence, brought out the glint and polish of the new marble headstones, or showed the grooved names in the old and leaning slate ones. Some graves were enclosed by rails, and others barely lifted their tops above the long grass. There were baby-nests hollowing into the turf, and clay-colored piles set head and foot with fresh boards. And on all these aunt Corinne looked with an interest which graves never failed to rouse in her, no matter what the occasion might be.
{Illustration: THE FIRST MESSENGER.}
The horses switched their tails along the outside of the fence. One backed his vehicle as far as his hitching-strap would let him, against the wheels of another's buggy, that other immediately responding by a similar movement. Some of them turned their heads and challenged Hickory and Henry and the saddle-horse with speaking whinneys. “Whe-hee-hee-hee! You going to be tied up here for the grass-flies to bite too? Where do you come from, and why don't you kick your folks for going to afternoon meeting in hot June time?”
The pilot of the caravan had helped take horse-thieves in his time, and he considered this a similar excursion. He dismounted swiftly, but with an air of caution, and as he let down the carriage steps, said he thought they better surround the house.
But Mrs. Tracy reached the ground as if she did not see him, and ran through the open gate with her black draperies flowing in a rush behind her. Robert Day and aunt Corinne were anxious to follow, and the man tied Grandma Padgett's horses to a rail fence across the road, while some protest was made among the fly-bitten row against the white cover of Zene's moving-wagon.
Although Bobaday felt excited and eager as he trotted up the grass path after Mrs. Tracy, the spirit of the country Sunday-school came out of doors to meet him.
There were the class of old men and the class of old women in the corner seats each side of the pulpit, and their lesson was in the Old Testament. The young ladies listened to the instruction of the smart young man of the neighborhood, and his sonorous words rolled against the echoing walls. He usually taught the winter district and singing schools. The young girl who did for summer schoolmiss, had a class of rosebud children in the middle of the meetinghouse, and they crowded to Her lap and crawled up on her shoulders, though their mothers, in the mothers' class, shook warning heads at them. Scent of cloves, roses and sweetbrier mingled with the woody smell of a building shut close six days out of seven. Two rascals in the boys' class, who, evading their teacher's count, had been down under the seats kicking each other with stiff new shoes, emerged just as the librarian came around with a pile of books, ready to fight good-naturedly over the one with the brightest cover. The boy who got possession would never read the book, but he could pull it out of his jacket pocket and tantalize the other boy going home.
The Sunday-school was a wholesome, happy place, even for these young heathen who were enjoying their bodies too much to care particularly about their souls. And when the superintendent stood up to rap the school to order for the close of the session, and line out one of Watts's sober hymns, there was a pleasant flutter of getting ready, and the smart young man of the neighborhood took his tuning-fork from his vest pocket to hit against his teeth so he could set the tune. He wore a very short-tailed coat, and had his hair brushed up in a high roach from his forehead, and these two facts conspired to give him a brisk and wide awake appearance as he stepped into the aisle holding a singing book in his hand.
But no peaceful, long-drawn hymn floated through the windows and wandered into the woods. The twang of the tuning-fork was drowned by a succession of cries. The smart young man's eyebrows went up to meet his roach while he stood in the aisle astonished to see a lady in trailing black clothes pounce upon a child strange to the neighborhood, and exclaim over, and cover it with kisses.
Some of the boys climbed upon seats to look, and there was confusion. A baby or two in the mothers' class began to cry, but the mothers themselves soon understood what was taking place, and forgot the decorum of Sunday-school, to crowd up to Mrs. Tracy.
“The child is hers,” one said to another. “It must have been lost. Who brought it in here?”
The fortunate messenger who had been successful in his undertaking, talked in undertones to the superintendent, telling the whole story with an air of playing the most important part in it. In return, the superintendent mentioned the notice he had taken of those two strangers, his attempt to induce the woman to go to the mothers' class, her restlessness and the child's lassitude.
The smart young man stood close by, receiving the correct version of the affair, and holding his tuning-fork and book behind him; and all the children, following their elders, flocked to seats around Mrs. Tracy, gazing over one another's shoulders, until she looked up abashed at the chaos her excitement had made.
“It's really your child?” said Grandma Padgett, sitting down beside the mother with a satisfied and benevolent expression.
“Oh, indeed, yes! Don't you know mamma, darling?”
For reply, the little girl was clinging mutely to her mother's neck. Her curls were damp and her eyes very dark-ringed. But there was recognition in her face very different from the puzzled and crouching obedience she had yielded to the one who claimed her before.
“They've been dosing her again,” pronounced Grandma Padgett severely.
“And she's all beat out tramping, poor little thing!” said one of the neighborhood mothers. “Look at them dusty feet!”
Mrs. Tracy gathered the dusty feet into her lap and wiped them with her lace handkerchief.
Word went forth to the edge of the crowd that the little girl needed water to revive her, and half a dozen boys raced to the nearest house for a tin pailful.
With love-feast tenderness the neighborhood mothers administered the dripping cup to little Rose Tracy when the boys returned. Her face and head were bathed, and hands and feet cooled. The old women all prescribed for her, and her mother listened to everybody with distended eyes, but fell into such frequent paroxysms of kissing her little girl that some of the boys ducked their heads to chuckle. This extravagant affection was more than they could endure.
“But where's that woman?” inquired Robert Day. He stood up on the seat behind his grandmother and Mrs. Tracy, and could see all over the house, but his eyes roamed unsuccessfully after the English player. The people having their interest diverted by that question, turned their heads and began to ask each other where she was. Nobody had noticed her leave the church, but it was a common thing to be passing in and out during Sunday school. She had made her escape. Half the assembly would have pursued her on the instant; she could not be far away. But Mrs. Tracy begged them to let her go; she did not want the woman, could not endure the sight of her, and never wished to hear of her again. Whatever harm was done to her child, was done. Her child was what she had come in search of, and she had it.
So the group eager to track a kidnapper across fields and along fence-corners, calmed their zeal and contented themselves with going outdoors and betting on what direction the fugitive from punishment had taken.
Perhaps she had grown to love little Rose, and was punished in having to give her up. In any case, the Pig-headed man and the various people attached to his show, no more appeared on the track followed by Grandma Padgett's caravan. Mrs. Tracy would not have him sought out and arrested, and he only remained in the minds of Robert and aunt Corinne as a type of monster.
When they left the meeting-house, the weather had changed. People dismissed from Sunday-school with scanter ceremony than usual, got into their conveyances to hurry home, for thunder sounded in the west, and the hot air was already cooled by a rush of wet fragrance from the advancing rain.
{Illustration: THEY BADE FAIRY CARRIE GOOD-BY.}
It proved to be a quick shower, white and violent while it lasted, making the fields smoke, and walling out distant views. Spouts of water ran off the carriage top down the oil cloth apron which protected Robert and his grandmother. Mrs. Tracy held her little girl in her lap, and leaned back with an expression of perfect happiness. The rain came just as her comfort had come, after so much parching suspense. Aunt Corinne wondered in silence if anything could be nicer than riding under a snug cover on which the sky-streams pelted, through a wonderland of fragrance. Every grateful shrub and bit of sod, the pawpaw leaves and spicewood stems, the half-formed hazel-nuts in fluted sheaths, and even new hay-stacks in the meadows, breathed out their best to the rain. The world never seems so fresh and lovable as after a June shower.
Presently the sun was shining, and the ground-incense steaming with stronger sweetness, and they came to the wet 'pike stretching like a russet-colored ribbon east and west, and turned west toward Indianapolis.
On the 'pike they met another of the men sent out by Mrs. Tracy and the lawyer. His horse's coat was smoking. Mrs. Tracy took up a gold pencil attached to her watch, and wrote a note to the lawyer. She was going on to the city, and would return directly home with her child. The note she sent by the men, after thanking them, and paying them in what Robert and his aunt considered a prodigal and wealthy manner.
So large a slice out of the afternoon had their trip to the meeting-house taken, that it was quite dark when the party drove briskly into Indianapolis.
It was a little city at that date. Still, Bobaday felt exalted by clanging car-bells and railroad crossings. It being Sunday evening, the freights were making up. The main street, called Washington, was but an extension of the 'pike, stretching broad and straight through the city. He noticed houses with balconies, set back on sloping lawns. Here a light disclosed a broad hall with dim stairs at the back. And in another place children were playing under trees; he could hear their calls, and by straining his eyes, barely discern that they wore sumptuous white city raiment. The tide of home-makers and beautifiers had not then rolled so far north of East Washington street as to leave it a mere boundary line.
Grandma Padgett and her party stopped at a tavern on Illinois street. Late in the night they were to separate, Mrs. Tracy taking the first train for Baltimore. So aunt Corinne and Robert, before going to bed, bade good-by to the child who had scarcely been a playmate to them, but more like a delicate plaything in whose helplessness they had felt such interest.
Rose, obeying her mamma, put her arms around their necks and kissed them, telling them to come and see her at home. She looked brighter than hitherto, and remembered a dollhouse and her birds at mamma's house; yet, her long course of opiates left her little recognition of the boy and girl she had so dimly seen.
Her mamma hugged them warmly, and Bobaday endured his share of the hugging with a very good grace, though he was so old. Then it seemed but a breath until morning, and but another breath until they were under way, the wagon creaking along the dewy 'pike ahead of them, an opal clearness growing through the morning twilight, and no Fairy Carrie asleep, like some tiny enchanted princess, on the back seat.
“The rest of the way,” observed Robert Day to his aunt, “there won't be anything happening—you see if there will. Zene says we're half across the State now. And I know we'll never see J. D. Matthews again. And nobody will be lost and have to be found, and there's no tellin' where that great big crowd Jonathan and his folks moved with, are.”
“I feel lonesome,” observed aunt Corinne somewhat pensively. “When Mrs. Tracy was sending back word to the Quaker tavern man, I wished we's going back to stay awhile longer. Some places are so nice!”
“Now it's a pretty thing for you to begin at your time of life,” said Grandma Padgett, “to set your faces backward and wish for what's behind. That's a silly notion. Folks that encourage themselves in doin' it don't show sound sense. The One that made us knew better than to let us stand still in our experience, and I've always found them that go forward cheerfully will pretty generally keep the land of Beulah right around them. Git up, Hickory!”
Thus admonished, the children entered the lone bridge over White River, or that branch of White River on which Indianapolis is situated. The stream, seen between chinks in the floor, appeared deep, but not particularly limpid. How the horses' feet thundered on the boards, and how long they trod before the little star at the other end grew to an opening quite large enough to let any vehicle out of the bridge!