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Updated: July 18, 2025
Then the supper-bell rung, and the landlady showed them into the big bare dining-room where she forgot all her troubles in the clatter of plates and cups. A company of men rushed from what was called the bar-room, though its shelves and counter were empty of decanters and glasses. They had the greater part of a long table to themselves, and Zene sat among them.
Presently Zene's countenance, and even the cast in his eyes, became a certainty instead of a wavering indistinctness, and he smiled with satisfaction while halting his vehicle at right angles with the carriage. "Where have you been?" inquired Grandma Padgett. "Over on t'other road," replied Zene, indicating the direction with his whip, "huntin' you folks.
"The very gentleman used to visit at your grand-marm's house," said Zene to Robert, "and your marm always said he was much of a gentleman," added Zene to aunt Corinne. "Down in the Mexican country when they didn't fight they stayed in camp, and sometimes they'd go out and hunt. Man that'd been huntin', come runnin' in one day scared nigh to death. He said he'd seen the old Bad Man.
"I wanted to break her first," apologized Zene. "She was worse than the man. But I missed her and hit him." Robert was glad Zene aimed as he did. "Then the man jumps and yells, and the woman jumps and yells, and the old gray he rears up and breaks loose.
"I told you about Little Ant Red and Big Ant Black?" "No, you never!" exclaimed Bobaday. "Well, once there was Little Ant Red and Big Ant Black lived neighbors." "Whose aunts were they each other's?" inquired the boy. "They wasn't your father's or mother's sisters; they was antymires," explained Zene. "Oh," said Robert Day. "Ant Red, she was a little bit of a thing; you could just see her.
"Folks could run against it on dark nights. Does he stay there by himself? And if robbers or old beggars came by they could nab him the minute he opened his door." "But if he has any boys," suggested Robert looking back, "they can see everybody pass, and it'd be just as good as going some place all the time. And who's afraid of robbers!" Zene beckoned to the carriage as he turned off the 'pike.
"Why, it's a p'epperation, or a plan of some kind," explained Zene. "So she invites Big Ant Black and all her family, and the spider and all his family, and the beetles and bugs and all their families, and the snake-feeders and Miss Katydid for young folks, and don't leave out a neighbor, to an apple-bee right inside the orchard fence.
Grandma Padgett decided that relationship must claim her for at least one meal. Bobaday and Corinne saw Zene pause at the arched gates of this modern castle, according to his morning's instructions. Corinne's. heart thumped apprehensively. It was a formidable thing to be going to cousin Padgett's. He lived in such overwhelming grandeur.
Aunt Corinne with some sharpness assured the Virginia children that her nephew and herself were indeed above such suspicion; that Ma Padgett and brother Tip had the most money, and even Zene was well provided with dollars; while they had silver spoons among their goods that Ma-Padgett said had been in the family more than fifty years!
She fancied it stretched like a telegraph wire from pole to pole, only near the ground, so the cattle of one State could not stray into the other, and so little children could have it to talk across, resting their chins on the cord. But when they came to the line and crossed it there was not even a mark on the ground; not so much as a furrow such as Zene made planting corn.
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