This lady had expected to find a little hotel, you remember.
But where is Baby Mitchell all this time? you are asking.
Oh, he is safe enough yet. Nothing at all has happened to him, and you must wait patiently until it is time for something to happen.
The lady is very tired, remember,—or at least as tired as anybody can be in that enchanted forest; and she is hungry, and must have her supper.
When the mother of the little children saw the lady coming, she was glad as well as astonished, and ran to meet her.
“Law me! You must be plumb tired out,” she said. “Come right along in, and set down and rest yourself. We hain’t got much, but what we have got you’re welcome to.”
That is the way the mountain people always talk. Their grammar is all wrong, but their hearts are all right,—and a good heart is worth a great deal more than good grammar; don’t you think so?
So the lady went in. There was nothing else to do. She couldn’t possibly have gone back all that way through the forest and across the rivers at night, you know. And though the log-house was so small and so crowded, she felt that she was not in the way, the mother and all the little children looked so friendly at her.
She was quite a wonderful lady,—or at least so thought that family in the woods; for while the little children stood looking at her, what do you think?