“Do you think,” whispered Doris, after they were in their places on the back seat, and Uncle Hiram was so busy watching the road that he couldn’t listen to them chattering, “do you think that Uncle Hiram is cross?”
“Well, I’m not sure,” Elizabeth Ann said. “Of course I ought not to have gone down in the cellar. Perhaps he isn’t cross when you do as he asks you to.”
Doris agreed that under those circumstances Uncle Hiram might not be cross. Then she put her head down on Elizabeth Ann’s shoulder and went to sleep. And Elizabeth Ann found that her own eyes insisted on closing, and she went to sleep too.
She woke up a little later to find that the car had stopped. Uncle Hiram was talking to a man who sat in another car, headed in the opposite direction.
“You sure you haven’t seen him?” the man was saying as Elizabeth Ann opened her eyes.
“I told you I hadn’t,” answered Uncle Hiram, and his voice was a deep growl. “I might have picked him up and given him a lift, if he asked me, but I wouldn’t lie about it. I haven’t seen any boy on the road since I started this trip.”
“The varmint is probably hiding around somewhere,” the man said crossly.
Elizabeth Ann leaned as far forward as she could, without waking the still sleeping Doris.
The man who sat in the other car did not have a pleasant face. He was thin, and his nose was red, while his eyes were small and looked angry. He had thrust his head out of the side of his car and was positively glaring at Uncle Hiram.
“Well, if you do see him, mind you pick him up and telephone me,” said the man, speaking more crossly still. “I’ll pay for the telephone call. He’s a bound boy, remember, and I have the right to him.”