Aunt Corinne drew back into a rigid attitude. “I don't believe it!”
she said.
Robert Day passed over her incredulity with a flickering smile.
“People don't have pigs' heads on them!” argued aunt Corinne. “Did
he grunt?”
“And he had a tush stickin' out from his lower jaw,” added Robert.
They gazed at each other in silent horror. While this awful
pantomime was going on, the flap of Grandma Padgett's tent was
lifted, and a voice of command, expressing besides astonishment and
alarm, startled their ears with--
“Children!”
Aunt Corinne leaped up and turned at bay, half-expecting to find the
man with the pig's head gnashing at her ear. But what she saw in the
sinking light was a fine old head in a night-cap, staring at them
from the tent. Bobaday and his aunt were so rapid in retiring that
their guardian was unable to make them explain their conduct as fully
as she desired. They slept so long in the morning that the camp was
broken up when Grandma Padgett called them out to breakfast.
[Illustration: THE VIRGINIAN AND HIS CHILDREN.]
Zene wanted the tent of aunt Corinne to stretch over the wagon-hoops.
He had already hitched the horses, restoring the gray and the white to
their former condition of yoke-fellows, and these two rubbed noses
affectionately and had almost as much to whisper to each other as had
Robert and Corinne over their breakfast.
The darkened wagon was nowhere to be seen. Corinne climbed a tall
stump as an observatory, and Bobaday went a piece into the bushes,
only to find that all that end of the camp was gone. The colony of
Virginians was also partly under way.
Aunt Corinne felt a certain sadness steal over her. She had brought
herself to admit the pig-headed man, with limitations. He might have
a pig's head on him, but it wasn't fast. He did it to frighten
children. She had fully intended to see him and be frightened by him
at any cost. Now he was gone like a bad dream in the night. And she
should not know if the little girl was stolen. She could only revenge
herself on Robert Day for having seen into that darkened wagon, with
the stove-pipe sticking out when she had not, by sniffing doubtfully
at every mysterious allusion to it. They did not mention the
pigheaded man to Grandma Padgett, though both longed to know if such
a specimen of natural history had ever come under her eyes. She would
have questioned then about the walk that led to this discovery. Her
prejudices against children's prowling away from their elders after
dark were very strong.
Aunt Corinne thought the pig-headed man might have come to their
carriage when they were ready to start, instead of the Virginian.
“Right along the pike?” he inquired cheerfully.
“I believe so,” said Grandma Padgett.
“You'll be in our company then as far as you go. It'll be better for
you to keep in a big company.”
“It will indeed,” said Grandma Padgett sincerely.
“Oh, you'll keep along to Californy,” said the Virginian.
“To the Illinois line,” amended Grandma Padgett, at which he
laughed, adding:
“Well, we'll neighbor for a while, anyhow.”
“Let your little boy and girl ride in our carriage,” begged Robert
Day, seizing on this relief from monotony.
“Yes do,” said his grandmother, turning her glasses upon the little
boy and girl. Aunt Corinne had been inspecting them as they stood at
their father's heels, and bestowing experimental smiles on them. The
boy was a clear brown-eyed fellow with butternut trousers up to his
arm-pits, and a wool hat all out of shape. The little girl looked
red-faced and precise, the color from her lips having evidently become
diluted through her skin. Over a linsey petticoat she wore a calico
belted apron. The belt was as broad as the length of aunt Corinne's
hand, for in the course of the morning aunt Corinne furtively
measured it. Although it was June weather, this little girl also wore
stout shoes and yarn stockings.
“Well, they might get in if they won't crowd you,” assented their
father. “You're all to take dinner with us, my wife says.”
The children were hoisted up the steps, which they climbed with
agile feet, as if accustomed to scaling high cart wheels. Bobaday sat
by his grandmother, and the back seat received this addition to the
party without at all crowding aunt Corinne. She looked the boy and
girl over with great satisfaction. They were near her own age.
“Do you play teeter in the woods?” she inquired with a fidget, by
way of opening the conversation.
The boy rolled his eyes towards her and replied in a slow drawl,
sometimes they did.
Robert Day then put it to him whether he liked moving.
“I like to ride the leaders for fawther,” replied the boy.
“What's your name?” inquired aunt Corinne, directing her inquiry to
both.
The little girl turned redder, answering in a broad drawl like her
brother, “His name's Jonathan and mine's Clar'sy Ellen.”
Aunt Corinne looked down at the hind wheel revolving at her side of
the carriage, and her lips unconsciously moved in meditation.
“Thrusty Ellen!” she repeated aloud.
“Clar'sy Ellen,” corrected the little girl, her broad drawl still
confusing the sound.
Aunt Corinne's lips continued to move. She whispered to the hind
wheel, “Mercy! If I was named Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen, I'd wish my
folks'd forgot to name me at all!”