Old Caravan Days Part 16

"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 pa.s.s 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," a.s.serted 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.

CHAPTER XVI. THE MINSTREL.

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 tw.a.n.ging and much personal enjoyment.

"It's why he didn't ever get married," explained aunt Corinne, const.i.tuting 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: