Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 18, 2025
Even the mud-wasps and tumble-bugs that hadn't been bid come and took part when they see the dirt a-flyin'. Ant Red set on the clover-head and teetered. "Now, down to this present minute," concluded Zene, "you never pick up an apple and find a red ant walkin' out of it.
The family sat in the-carriage while Zene took out the horses, sheltered the wagon under thick foliage where rain scarcely penetrated, and stretched the canvas for a tent.
The night stage had got in three hours late, owing to a breakdown, and one calamity she said, is only the forerunner of another. Zene had driven ahead with the load. It was a foggy morning, and drops of moisture hung to the carriage curtains. There was the morning star yet trembling over the town. Aunt Corinne hugged her wrap, and Bobaday stuck his hands deep in his pockets.
'I've got a team and a wagon out here, I s'ze, 'and pervisions too, but I've got the means to pay for a warm bite, I s'ze, 'and if you can't accommodate me, I s'pose there's other neighbors that can." "You shouldn't told him you had money and things!" exclaimed Robert, bulging his eyes. "I see that, soon's I done it," returned Zene, shaking a line over the near horse.
But the tea and the hour, and her Virginia memories through which that old sing-song ran like the murmur of bees, made Grandma Padgett propitious, and she laid her gracious commands on Zene first, and J. D. Matthews afterwards. So that not only "Barb'ry Allen" was sung, but J. D.'s ditty, into which he plunged with nasal twanging and much personal enjoyment.
This tale, heard in the barn while Zene was greasing harnesses, and heard without Grandma Padgett's sanction, now made her grandson shiver with dread as his feet went down into the Susan House dungeon. It was trying enough to be exploring a strange cellar full of groans, without straining your eyes in expectation of seeing a little old man in a red nightcap, sitting astride of a barrel!
Robert sifted all these harrowing circumstances. "Maybe they weren't stealing the horses," he hazarded. "Don't folks ever unhitch other folks' horses to put 'em in their stable?" Zene drew down the corners of his mouth to express impatience. "But I'd hated to been there," Robert hastened to add.
She went out, telling Zene she was at her wits' end. "Oh, they ain't gone far, marm," reassured Zene. "You'll find out they'll come back to the tavern all right; mebby before we get there." But every such hopeful return to base disheartened the searchers more. At last the grandmother was obliged to lie down. Early in the morning the Virginian came, full of concern.
Zene drove the carriage out of the barnyard, and Grandma Padgett, having closed her account with the tavern, took the lines, an object of interest and solicitude to all who saw her depart, and turned Old Hickory and Old Henry on a southward track. Zene followed with the wagon; he was on no account to loiter out of speaking distance.
They slept so long in the morning that the camp was broken up when Grandma Padgett called them out to breakfast. Zene wanted the tent of aunt Corinne to stretch over the wagon-hoops.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking