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'd stolen 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!”
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg