"I hain't er feared," she said; "I er a goin' down yer ter pap's cyart. Pap an' me we kem ter town tergether. I jist stopped ter ask yer ef ye'd seed John, that wer' all I keered about ye. Ye needn't er be a frettin' yerself 'bout me."
The man chuckled in a puzzled way and walked on, muttering to himself something about the "dangedest prettiest idiot" that he ever saw. He looked back a time or two to watch Milly as she carelessly strolled along, her petite form showing its lithe, wild grace, with every movement and her wisp of yellowish hair shining under her hat and straying down over the back of her loose cotton gown. His eyes had something of the wistful glare with which a cat gazes at an escaped bird.
Milly found her father's cart under a tree in the outskirts of the town, the one kind-eyed, long-horned little ox contentedly ruminating between the rude shafts.
"W'y, ole Ben, air ye tired er waitin'?" she exclaimed, patting the bony little fellow on the shoulder, "we'll be er goin' soon es pap comes, won't we, Ben?"
"W'y, ole Ben, air ye tired er waiten'?"
she exclaimed. Page 129.
She climbed into the shallow box of the cart and sat down on its bottom with her head thrown back so that she could gaze up through the tree-tops at the bright blue sky. A breeze, cool and sweet, was stealing down from the mountains rustling the few dry leaves that still clung to the branches overhead. She sang, in a thin childish falsetto, snatches of the simple hymn-tunes she had caught from her parents; but she got the words together in a meaningless confusion. Her conception of a song of any sort rose no higher than a consciousness of the pleasing sounds of the voice singing it.
For a long while she waited patiently, now and then glancing down the unkempt street to see if her father had yet come in sight; then she stood up in the cart and looked. It was growing late. The sun was slipping down behind the mountains and a cooler breath crept through the valley.
"Well, Ben, hit air no use er stayin' yer any longer, I 'spec' at pap he air drunk. Git erp ther', Ben!"