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The stations usually stand alone, in some isolated spot on the wayside, and consist of a little log or frame tavern, a long shambling stable, innumerable odds and ends of cribs, store-houses, and outbuildings, forming a kind of court or stable-yard; a rickety medley of old carts and carioles lying about basking in the sun; a number of old white-headed men smoking their pipes, and leathery-faced women on household duties intent, with a score or so of little cotton-headed children running about over the manure pile in the neighborhood of the barn, to keep the pigs company; here and there a strapping lout of a boy swinging on a gate and whistling for his own amusement; while cows, sheep, goats, chickens, and other domestic animals and birds browse, nibble, and peck all over the yard in such a lazy and rural manner as would delight an artist.
All the smug minor manikins of the social world were on the qui vive for some cotton-headed doll of a girl with an endless bank-account.
Here as well as elsewhere, children continue to be born in great numbers, and groups of them were to be seen before every house playing in the mud just as little cotton-headed children play all over the world.
So on and on, Mary spending the first night in a lone forest cabin of pine poles, whose master, a Confederate deserter, fed his ague-shaken wife and cotton-headed children oftener with the spoils of his rifle than with the products of the field. The spy and the deserter lay down together, and together rose again with the dawn, in a deep thicket, a few hundred yards away.
I say cotton-headed, because these were of the blue-eyed, white-haired race who have a natural affinity for muddy places, and whose cheeks have a natural propensity to gather bloom and dirt at the same time. I struck out on the high points of the Normalm, and on one of them discovered an old church, surrounded by trees, with benches conveniently placed beneath their shade for weary pedestrians.
"You cotton-headed Scandinavian cattleship ballast, catch that ball in your arms when I throw it to you, and don't let go of it!" shrieked Bost, shooting it at him again. "Oll right," said Ole patiently. He cornered the ball after a short struggle and stood hugging it faithfully. "Toss it back, toss it back!" howled Bost, jumping up and down.
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