CHAPTER XLIII.
IN CYNTHIANA.
GEORGE P. STORMS & CO.,
DEALERS IN
DRY GOODS, GROCERIES & PROVISIONS.
That was the sign which our travellers saw after landing at the station in the little town of Cynthiana. Magdalen was the first to see it, and the first to enter a low room where a young man of twenty-five or more was weighing a codfish for a negress with a blue turban bound around her head.
Magdalen was taking the lead in all things, and Mr. Grey and Guy let her, and smiled at her enthusiasm and the effect she produced upon the young man. He was not prepared for this apparition of beauty in so striking contrast to old Hannah and her codfish, and he blushed and stammered in his reply to her question as to whether “Mrs. James Storms was a relative of his, and lived near them.”
“She is my mother, and lives just down the street. Did you wish to see her?” he said, and Magdalen replied:
“Yes; that is, if she is the Mrs. Storms I am after. Is she a church woman, and has she ever been in Cincinnati?”
“She is a church woman, and has been in Cincinnati,” the young man said, and then he followed Magdalen to the door and pointed a second time to his mother’s house, and stood watching her as she sped like a deer along the muddy street, leaving Mr. Grey and Guy very far behind her.