They heard a step behind them, and, turning, they saw old Wrinkle peering at them through the dark as he stood near the barn.
"If that's you, Alf," he called out, "you'd better come on to supper. After a square meal at the Carlton Hotel you may look on our fare as purty pore stuff. But you may choke it down. It's gettin' cold; the grease in the beef hash is turnin' to tallow, an' the bread was baked yesterday an' is as hard as a brick."
"All right; I'm with you," Henley said, good-naturedly, as he saw Dixie hurrying away.
CHAPTER XVIII
N the morning set for the excursion to Carlton, Henley went down to the stable and harnessed and hitched his horse to his buggy. Old Jason, who was with him, made no offer to assist with the various buckles and straps, but stood leaning in the barn-door chewing tobacco. He was sufficiently courteous, however—as Henley started away with the remark that he was going to give Dixie Hart a lift over to Carlton and back—to slouch in front, his hands in his pockets, his tousled head bared to the slanting rays of the sun, and open the big gate.
Reaching the front-door of Dixie Hart's cottage, Henley had only a minute to wait. Mrs. Hart, followed by her sister with an arm in a sling, came down the steps with a mincing step, her weak eyes shaded by her thin hand, and approached him.
"It's powerful good of you to take my daughter," she said, in grateful tones. "She has so little pleasure in her life, and she's been wanting to go to Carlton for a long time. A place even as much like a city as that is, kind o' interests a young girl. She's always reading about the doings over there among the rich folks."
"I'll see that nothing happens to her, and fetch her back safe," he promised. Then Dixie emerged from the house wearing her best dress, a white muslin, immaculately clean and well ironed, and adorned by broad, pink ribbons which heightened her complexion. Her hat was new and most becoming, and as she rustled out to the gate he felt a thrill of pride in having such a presentable companion. She touched her mother playfully under the chin and kissed her on the cheek.