“Yes, sir—ee!” declared the young man again. “I seen her in Mis Brown’s lap as sure as shootin’. It’s lucky she’s fell in such good hands. Well, I’ll catch up with that old white plug of a horse. G’lang!” He whipped up, passing the turn in the road where Phronsie was being carried off in the high wagon on the “short cut” to the Brown house in Maybury.
CHAPTER VI
BACK TO MAMSIE
“TH’ beef’s biled ’mos’ to nothin’,” said Mrs. Brown, sticking a long iron fork into the pot of corned beef, surrounded by bubbling heaps of cabbage. She had thrown off her sunbonnet on the old sofa in the sitting-room, and hurried into the bedroom where she had deposited Phronsie, fast asleep, on the gay patched bedquilt.
“There, you sweet lamb, you!” Then she hurried out to see about the belated dinner.
“John,” she called, as she ran out to the barn, “come, dinner’s ready.”
Farmer Brown turned as he was leading the old white horse to his stall. “Is she awake?” pointing with his thumb to the house.
“No,” Mrs. Brown sped back to the kitchen.
“What’ll we do with that little gal?” the farmer’s face puckered all up with dismay as he reflected: “Nobody on th’ road knows th’ fust thing about her, an’ I s’pose her Ma’s cryin’ her eyes out.” He slouched up to the kitchen door.
“I thought you was never comin’”; his wife set the big blue platter with the corned beef and its generous fringe of cabbage on the table; then down went the dish of potatoes and the loaf of bread. “Th’ beef’s all biled to pieces,” she said, getting into her chair.
“What beats me,” said Mr. Brown, sitting down heavily, and taking up the horn-handled carving knife and fork, “is, what are we to do with her.” He pointed with carving knife to the bedroom.