“I should think he needn't make any excuses for that,” remarked Grandma Padgett, smiling.
J. D. sawed back and forth on a log, his silly face rosy with pleasure over the tale of his own woes:
O, I went to a friend's house,
The friend says “Come in.
Take a hot cup of coffee,
O where have you been?”
It's down to the Squi-er's
With a license I went,
And my good Sunday clothes on,
To marry intent.
“O where is the lady?”
The good Squi-er, says he.
“O she's gone with a wed'wer
That is not poor J. D.”
“It's now you surprise me,”
The friend says a-sigh'n,
“J. D. Matthews not married,
The sun will not shine!”
“Well, I think she was simple!” exclaimed aunt Corinne in epilogue, “when she might have had a man that washed the dishes and talked poetry all the time.”
CHAPTER XVII. THE HOUSE WITH LOG STEPS.
Richmond must soon have seemed far behind Grandma Padgett's little caravan, had not Fairy Carrie still drowsed in the carriage, keeping the Richmond adventures always present.
They had parted from J. D. Matthews and the Virginian and his troop. Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen were somewhere on the road ahead, but at a point unknown to Robert and Corinne. They might turn off towards the southwest if all the emigrants agreed to forsake the St. Louis route. No one could tell where J. D. might be rattling his cart.
The afternoon which finally placed Richmond in diminishing perspective, Robert rode with Zene and lived his campaign over again. This was partly necessary because little Carrie lay on the back carriage-seat. But it was entirely agreeable, for Zene wanted to know all the particulars, and showed a flattering, not to say a stimulating anxiety to get a good straight look at Bobaday's prowess in rescuing the distressed. Said Zene:
“But what if her folks never turn up?”