Aunt Corinne looked down at the hind wheel revolving at her side of the carriage, and her lips unconsciously moved in meditation.
“Thrusty Ellen!” she repeated aloud.
“Clar'sy Ellen,” corrected the little girl, her broad drawl still confusing the sound.
Aunt Corinne's lips continued to move. She whispered to the hind wheel, “Mercy! If I was named Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen, I'd wish my folks'd forgot to name me at all!”
CHAPTER XIII. FAIRY CARRIE AND THE PIG-HEADED MAN.
Little Miami river was crossed without mishap, and the Padgetts and Breakaways took dinner together.
Robert Day could not help noticing the difference between his grandmother's wagon and the wagons of the Virginians. Their wagon-beds were built almost in the shape of the crescent moon, bending down in the centre and standing high at the ends, and they appeared half as long again as the Ohio vehicle. The covers were full of innumerable ribs, and the puckered end was drawn into innumerable puckers.
The children took their dinners to the yellow top of a brand-new stump which, looked as if somebody had smoothed every sweet-smelling ring clean on purpose for a picnic table. Some branches of the felled tree were near enough to make teeter seats for Corinne and Thrusty Ellen. Jonathan and Robert stood up or kneeled against the arching roots. Dinner taken from the top of a stump has the sap of out-door enjoyment in it; and if you have to scare away an ant, or a pop-eyed grasshopper thuds into the middle of a plate, you still feel kindly towards these wild things for dropping in so sociably.
Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen were rather silent, but such remarks as they made were solid information.