We then told the woman about our discovery in the barn. And while we were talking, the sound of hoofs and steel buggy wheels came to us from the graveled drive, as on the preceding day. Running to the front door, we got a glimpse of young fatty, driving his father’s rig, while on the small half of the seat sat a tall, rangy man with a mean-looking star pinned on his vest.
CHAPTER XVIII
A WHISPERING VOICE
“It’s Lawyer Chew’s rig,” says Mrs. Doane, with a puzzled look at the newcomers.
“Yes,” says Poppy, “and the sort of near-human-looking object that you see squashed on the seat behind the whip socket is Lawyer Chew’s pet son, Eggbert.”
“He looks like his father.”
“And acts like him, too, you’ll find.”
It didn’t take young fatty as long to untangle himself from the buggy seat as his old man. And, say, did he ever strut it off as he came toward the house! The king had arrived! You tell ’em! And now, at a snap of his royal fingers, everybody and everything in the landscape, not on his side, would do a neat and obedient little loop-the-loop.
Yah, he had us licked in his own mind even before he got out of his pa’s spraddle-wheeled buggy. But don’t weep too soon over our sad fate. For you may find that there’s a laugh coming yet.
Chuckling, Poppy pulled me back out of sight.
“Quick, Jerry!—to the kitchen.”