Robert Clinton was drawing nearer. As yet he had not discovered them but his eyes, grown fiercer and more impatient, were never at rest.
With a groan, Gregory thrust some money into the showman's hand, and he and Grace mingled with the noisy sight-seers flocking under the black tent.
CHAPTER XXII
THE STREET FAIR
Littleburg was trembling under the fearful din of a carnival too big for it, when Abbott Ashton, after his weeks of absence returned to find himself at Hamilton Gregory's door. He discovered old Mrs. Jefferson in the front room—this July night—because old age is on no friendly terms with falling dew; but every window was open.
"Come in," she cried, delighted at sight of his handsome smiling face —he had been smiling most of the time during his drive from Simmtown with Robert Clinton. "Here I sit by the window, where sometimes I imagine I hear a faint far-away sound. I judge it's from some carnival band. Take this chair and listen attentively; your ears are younger— now!"
Abbott did not get all of this because of the Gargantuan roar that swept through the window, but he gravely tilted his head, then took the proffered ear-trumpet: "You are right," he said, "I hear something."
"It's the street fair," she announced triumphantly. "But sometimes it's louder. How fine you look, Abbott—just as if your conscience doesn't hurt you for disappearing without leaving a clue to the mystery. You needn't be looking around, sir,—Fran isn't here."
"I wonder where she is?" Abbott smiled, "I'm dreadfully impatient to tell her the good news. Mrs. Jefferson, I'm to teach in a college— it's a much bigger thing than the position I lost here. And I have a chance to work out some ideas that I know Fran will like. I used to think that everything ought to be left precisely as it is, because it's been that way so long—I mean the church; and schools; and—and society. But I've made up my mind that nothing is right, unless it works right."
Mrs. Jefferson listened in desperate eagerness. "A watch?" she hazarded.