“And she said”—went on the piteous little voice, “Octavia said that we hurt you—spoiled everything! Bashie, is it true? Is that what children do when they are aliens?”
Of course I tried to comfort her with soft words. I drew her in beside me and cuddled her. There were strangling sobs in my throat and my eyes were wet, but she was quiet and tearless.
“She’s jest as still and sot as the meetin’ house,” Loveday was in the habit of saying. Loveday had never even heard of Hosea Bigelow! “She’s more’n all these, as the boys say, but ’tain’t easy to make her out, and she ain’t a-goin’ to down her head for nobody!”
Estelle fell asleep after an hour or more and then sighs and broken sobs came from her lips; and she tossed about restlessly all night as if with troubled dreams. I was only sixteen, and sixteen in Palmyra is not so old as it is where life flows in broader channels, but I knew enough of life to make my heart yearn over the proud little soul that would always carry an undaunted front to the world—and get the deeper scars thereby, though so bravely hidden.
Many times, in the years that came after, I remembered that night and its sequel. There seemed likely to be no sequel, the next morning. The child was like herself and apparently only careful and troubled about her white turkey, that had an irresponsible habit of leading her delicate brood into far pastures where thunder-storms might be their death. Dave, it must be admitted, was of but little help to her in the arduous business of turkey-raising. He took its difficulties lightly and made himself very unpleasant to the gobbler. Her usual small but exacting affairs seemed to engross Estelle that morning, but the next morning we discovered that there had been a mysterious disappearance!
Two small beds had not been slept in, and neither Dave nor Estelle were to be found. Viola was sent by Loveday to call them when it was long past breakfast time—for Loveday had a weakness about letting them lie in bed, declaring that only “ingy-rubber legs” could stand the running that they did. Viola returned wide-eyed and with her face so pale that the freckles stood out upon it like little spatters of mud.
“They’re gone, ma’am!” she shouted in grandma’s ear. “They’re all gone, for their little clothes are all pulled over and they must each have took a bundle!”
And the idea of a bundle seemed so to impress Viola with the finality of their departure that she threw her apron over her head and gave way to violent weeping.
Then began as great a panic in the house and in the town as on that other day when Estelle had climbed old “Blue” to find Heaven and her mother. For a while the only information we could gather was to the effect that a drover, crossing the bridge to Palmyra shortly after eleven o’clock, the night before, had seen, by the light of a waning moon, two small figures going in the opposite direction. One small figure had fled in evident alarm at sight of his cattle. This was positive identification. The only two things of which Estelle admitted that she was afraid were thunder and cows.
Parties had started for the other side of the river in hot pursuit of the little fugitives when Uncle Horace was seen to put forth from the farther shore in his rowboat with what seemed to be two small persons in the stern. Loveday, who had repaired with the old spy-glass to the upper piazza, descried a glint of yellow locks and, presently, Estelle’s Sunday hat with the tall white feather. Even in her stress of emotion the child had not been able to forego the tall white feather that had been her joy.