Aunt Corinne told her nephew in a slightly guarded whisper, that she never had seen such a mean man as that one was.
“They ought to prove it before they get her, then,” said Grandma Padgett.
“Yes,” he assented. “They ought to prove it.”
“And they must be right here in the place,” she continued. “I'm afraid I'll have trouble with them.”
“We could go on to-night,” exclaimed Robert Day. “We could go on to Indianapolis, and that's where the governor lives, Zene says; and when we told the governor, he'd put the pig-headed folks in jail.” Small notice being taken of this suggestion by the elders, Robert and Corinne bobbed their heads in unison and discussed it in whispers together.
The woman of the house locked up that part which let out upon the log steps, before she conducted her guests to supper. She was a partisan of Grandma Padgett's.
At table the brown-eyed child whom Grandma Padgett still held upon her lap, refused food and continued to demand her mother. She leaned against the old lady's shoulder seeing every crack in the walls, every dish upon the cloth, the lawyer who sat opposite, and the concerned faces of Bobaday and Corinne. Supper was too good to be slighted, in spite of Carrie's dangerous position. The man of the house was a Quaker, and while his wife stood up to wait on the table, he repeatedly asked her in a thee-and-thou language highly edifying to aunt Corinne, for certain pickles and jams and stuffed mangoes; and as she brought them one after the other, he helped the children plentifully, twinkling his eyes at them. He was a delicious old fellow; as good in his way as the jams.
“And won't thee have some-in a sasser?” he inquired tenderly of Carrie, “and set up and feed thyself? Thee ought to give thy grandame a chance to eat her bite—don't thee be a selfish little dear.”
“I want my mamma,” responded Carrie, at once taking this twinkle-eyed childless father into her confidence. “I'm waiting for my mamma. When she comes she'll give me my supper and put me to bed.”
“Thee's a big enough girl to wait ort thyself,” said the Quaker, not understanding the signs his wife made to him.