The lawyer smiled as he laid down his fork, and barely mentioned the conflicting facts:
“She took considerable pains to tell something about herself: more than was necessary. But if they kidnapped the child, they are dangerously bold and confident in exhibiting and claiming her.”
CHAPTER XX. SUNDAY ON THE ROAD.
Aunt Corinne occupied with her mother a huge apartment over the sitting-room, in which was duplicated the fireplace below. At this season the fireplace was closed with a black board on which paraded balloon-skirted women cut out of fashion plates.
The chimneys were built in two huge stacks at the gable-ends of the house, outside the weather boarding: a plan the architects of this day utterly condemn. The outside chimney was, however, as far beyond the stick-and-clay stacks of the cabin, as our fire-stone flues are now beyond it. This house with log steps no longer stands as an old landmark by the 'pike side in Greenfield. But on that June morning it looked very pleasant, and the locust-trees in front of it made the air heavy with perfume. There is no flower like the locust for feeding honey to the sense of smell. Half the bees from William Sebastian's hives were buzzing overhead, when Bobaday and aunt Corinne sat down by Zene on the log steps to unload their troubles. All three were in their Sunday clothes. Zene had even greased his boots, and looked with satisfaction on the moist surfaces which he stretched forth to dry in the sun.
He had not seen Carrie borne away, but he had been to the show afterwards, and heard her sing one of her songs. He told the children she acted like she never see a thing before her, and would go dead asleep if they didn't stick pins in her like they did in a woman he seen walkin' for money once. Robert was fain to wander aside on the subject of this walking woman, but aunt Corinne kept to Fairy Carrie, and made Zene tell every scrap of information he had about her.
“After I rubbed the horses this mornin',” he proceeded, “I took a stroll around the burg, and their tent and wagon's gone!”
“Gone!” exclaimed aunt Corinne. “Clear out of town?”
Zene said he allowed so. He could show the children where the tent and wagon stood, and it was bare ground now. He had also discovered the time-honored circus-ring, where every summer the tinseled host rode and tumbled. But under the circumstances, a circus-ring had no charms.