“Oh, she punished Adeline. But that never had any effect on her. Adeline was a funny child,” said Grandma Padgett, retrospective tenderness showing through her blue glasses. “I remember once she got to eatin' brown paper, and mother told her it would kill her if she didn't quit it. Adeline—made up her mind she was going to eat brown paper if it did kill her. She never doubted that it would come true as mother said. But she prepared to die, and made her will and divided her things. Mother found it out and put a stop to the business. I remember,” said Grandma Padgett, laughing, “that I was disappointed, because I had to give back what she willed to me! yet I didn't want Adeline to die. She was a lively child. She jumped out of windows and tom-boyed around, but everybody liked her. Once I had some candy and divided fair enough, I thought, but Adeline after she ate up what she had, said I'd be sorry if I didn't give her more, because she was going, to die. It worked so well on my feelings that next time I tried that plan on Adeline's feelings, and told her if she didn't do something I wanted her to do she'd be sorry; for I was going to die. She said she knew it; everybody was going to die some day, and she couldn't help it and wasn't going to be sorry for any such thing! Poor Adeline: many a year she's been gone, and I'm movin' further away from the old home.”
Grandma Padgett lifted the lines and slapped them on the backs of old Hickory and Henry. Rousing themselves from coltish recollections of their own, perhaps, the horses began to trot.
{Illustration: THE LAWYER.}
In Indiana, some reaches of the 'pike were built on planks instead of broken stone, and gave out a hollow rumble instead of a flinty roar. The shape and firmness of the road-bed were the same, but the ends of boards sometimes cropped out along the sides. In this day, branches of the old national thoroughfare penetrate to every part of the Hoosier State. The people build 'pikes instead of what are called dirt roads. There are, of course, many muddy lanes and by-ways. But they have some of the best drives which have been lifted out of the Mississippi Valley.
Though the small caravan had lost time, and Son Tip might be waiting at the Illinois line before they reached that point, Grandma Padgett said they would all go to morning meeting in the town where they stopped Saturday night, and only drive a short piece on Sunday afternoon. She hated to be on expense, but they had much to return thanks for; and the Israelites made Sabbath day's journeys when they were moving.
The first Sunday—which seemed so remote now—had been partially spent in a grove where they camped for dinner, and Grandma Padgett read the Bible, and made Bobaday and Corinne answer their catechism. But this June Sunday was to be of a thanksgiving character. And they spent it in Greenfield.
At Cambridge City little Carrie roused sufficiently to eat with evident relish. But no such recollection of Dublin, Jamestown called Jimtown for short, by some inhabitants, and only distinguished by its location from another Jamestown in the State—-Knightstown and Charlottesville, remained to her as remained to Bobaday and Corinne. The Indiana village did not differ greatly from the Ohio village situated on the 'pike. There were always the church with a bonny little belfry, and the schoolhouse more or less mutilated as to its weather boarding. The 'pike was the principal street, and such houses as sat at right angles to it, looked lonesome, and the dirt roads weedy or dusty.
Greenfield was a country seat and had a court house surrounded by trees. It looked long and straggling in the summer dusk. Zene, riding ahead to secure lodgings, came back as far as the culvert to tell Grandma Padgett there was no room at the tavern Court, was session, and the lawyers on the circuit filled the house. But there was another place, near where they now halted, that sometimes took in travellers for accommodation's sake. He pointed it out, a roomy building with a broad flight of leg steps leading up to the front doors. Zene said it was not a tavern, but rather nicer than a tavern. He had already prevailed on the man and woman keeping it to take in his party.
Robert and aunt Corinne scampered up the log steps and Grandma Padgett led Fairy Carrie; after them. A plain tidy woman met them at the door and took them into a square room. There were the homemade carpet, the centre-table with daguerreotypes standing open and glaring such light as they had yet to reflect, samplers and colored prints upon the walls, but there was also a strange man busy with some papers at the table.
His hat stood beside him on the floor, and he dropped the sorted papers into it. He was, as Grandma Padgett supposed, one of the lawyers on the circuit. After looking up, he kept on sorting and folding his papers.