"'I was ashamed to tell you what I really wanted, for fear you would laugh at me,' she replied, 'I never do tell the least bit of a fib that I'm not found out.'
"'That ought to teach you not to tell any,' I said, rather severely.
"'Indeed I don't, Miss Mabel—unless it's about some foolishness like this. I'm not a big story teller—don't think I am.'
"'I shall not unless you force me to,' I answered. 'Come, we must find your mistress now.'
"I walked quickly on, and she followed me in silence. Once I glanced back at her—there was an expression on her face which puzzled me, yes, almost made me afraid. I could imagine Clytemnestra holding her midnight watch, with a face like that—Lady Macbeth waiting for her husband's return, with eyes like those—oh, I had grown so fanciful and silly during those past days.
"We found Mr. James Harrington with his mother, who was just driving away in the carriage.
"When it came back, I saw him return to the Eatons, who seemed to occupy him entirely. Feeling myself completely unregarded, I wandered off by myself, interested in the strange people that surrounded me.
"I looked about and found that I had lost sight of the whole party. I was not frightened, because the fair grounds were in full view, and I could find my way back easily enough, but I was a little amazed to think that my presence had been of so little consequence to the gentlemen of the party, that I had been permitted to steal away unnoticed.
"I walked on among the tents—nobody looked at me unpleasantly or spoke rudely to me, and when my first feeling of pique had subsided, I was not sorry to have an opportunity of examining more closely these strange and incomprehensible people who, during so many ages, have kept up their distinctive manners and customs, as much a mystery now as when they first made their appearance among the inhabitants of Europe.
"Such picturesque looking men, lazily basking in the noon-tide sun—such groups of lovely children, that would have sent Murillo into ecstacies—such beautiful girls, whose every movement had a willowy, sensuous grace that the women of no other people ever possessed—weird, witch-like old crones, with such depths of wickedness in their fiery eyes, that in looking at them one could easily have believed in the old-time evidence of those who made bargains for their souls with the Evil One. On I wandered, sometimes stopping to admire the children, or speak a few words to the young girls.