Old Caravan Days Part 17

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's With 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'wer That 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 s.h.i.+ne!"

"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."

CHAPTER XVII. THE HOUSE WITH LOG STEPS.

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 diminis.h.i.+ng 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 gla.s.ses. "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 do _she'd_ be 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 princ.i.p.al 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?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.