Old Caravan Days Part 18

"Grandma," murmured Carrie vaguely, turning her eyes toward their guardian by the window.

"Yes, that's Grandma," said Bobaday. "But don't you know where your own pa and ma are?"

"Papa," whispered Carrie, like a baby trying the words. "Mamma.

Papa--mamma."

"Yes, dear," exclaimed aunt Corinne. "Where do they live? She's big enough to know that if she knows anything."

"Let's get her to sing a song," suggested Bobaday. "If she can remember a song, she can remember what happened before they made her sing."

"That papa?" said Carrie, looking at the stranger by the table.

"No," returned aunt Corinne, deigning a glance his way. "That's only a gentleman goin' to eat supper here. Sing, Carrie. Now, Bobaday Padgett," warned aunt Corinne, shooting her whisper behind the curled head, "don't you go and scare her by sayin' anything about that pig-man."

"Don't you scare her yourself," returned Robert with a touch of indignation. "You've got her eyes to stickin' out now. Sing a pretty tune, Carrie. Come on, now."

The docile child slid off the lounge and stood against it, piping directly one of her songs. Yet while her trembling treble arose, she had a troubled expression, and twisted her fingers about each other.

In an instant this expression became one of helpless terror. She crowded back against the lounge and tried to hide herself behind Bobaday and Corinne.

They looked toward the door, and saw standing there the young man who sold tickets at the entrance of the pig-headed individual's show.

His hands were in his pockets, but he appeared ready to intone forth:

"Walk right in, ladies and gentlemen, and hear Fairy Carrie, the child vocalist!" And the smoky torch was not needed to reveal his satisfaction in standing just where he did.

CHAPTER XVIII. "COME TO MAMMA!"

Though the dissipated looking young man only stood at the door a moment, and then walked out on the log steps at a sauntering pace, he left dismay behind him. Aunt Corinne flew to her mother, imploring that Carrie be hid. Robert Day stood up before the child, frowning and shaking his head.

"All the pig-headed folks will be after her," exclaimed aunt Corinne. "They'll come right into this room so soon as that fellow tells them. Le's run out the back way, Ma Padgett!"

Grandma Padgett, who had been giving the full strength of her spectacles to the failing light and her knitting, beheld this excitement with disapproval.

"You'll have my needles out," she objected. "What pig-headed folks are after what? Robert, have you hurt Sissy?"

"Why, Grandma Padgett, didn't you see the doorkeeper looking into the room?"

"Some person just looked in--person they appear to object to," said the strange man, giving keen attention to what was going forward.

"Are these your own children, ma'am?"

Grandma Padgett rolled up her knitting, and tipped her head slightly back to bring the stranger well under her view.

"This girl and the boy belong to my family," she replied.

"But whose is the little girl on the lounge?"

"I don't know," replied Grandma Padgett, somewhat despondently. "I wish I did. She's a child that seems to be lost from her friends."

"But you can't take her away and give her to the show people again,"

exclaimed aunt Corinne, turning on this stranger with nervous defiance. "She's more ours than she is yours, and that ugly man scared her so she couldn't do anything but cry or go to sleep. If brother Tip was here he wouldn't let them have her."

"That man that just went out, is a showman," explained Robert Day, relying somewhat on the stranger for aid and re-inforcement. "She was in the show that he tended door for. They were awful people. Aunt Krin and I slipped her off with us."

"That's kidnapping. Stealing, you know," commented the stranger.

"_They'd_ stolen her," declared Bobaday.

"How do you know?"

"Look how 'fraid she was! I peeped into their wagon in the woods, and as soon as she opened her eyes and saw the man with the pig's head, she began to scream, and they smothered her up."

Grandma Padgett was now sitting on the lounge with Carrie lifted into her lap. Her voice was steady, but rather sharp. "This child's in a fit! Robert Day, run to the woman of the house and tell her to bring hot water as soon as she can."

During the confusion which followed, and while Carrie was partially undressed, rubbed, dipped, and dosed between her set teeth, the stranger himself went out to the log steps and stood looking from one end of the street to the other. The dissipated young man appeared nowhere in the twilight.

Returning, the lawyer found Grandma Padgett holding her patient wrapped in shawls. The landlady stood by, much concerned, and talking about a great many remedies beside such as she held in her hands.

Aunt Corinne and Robert Day maintained the att.i.tude of guards, one on each side of the door.

Carrie was not only conscious again, but wide awake and tingling through all her little body. Her eyes had a different expression.

They saw everything, from the candle the landlady held over her, to the stranger entering: they searched the walls piteously, and pa.s.sed the faces of Bobaday and aunt Corinne as if they by no means recognized these larger children.

"I want my mamma!" she wailed. Tears ran down her face and Grandma Padgett wiped them away. But Carrie resisted her hand.

"Go away!" she exclaimed. "You aren't my mamma!"

"Poor little love!" sighed the landlady, who had picked up some information about the child.

"And you aren't my mamma!" resented Carrie. "I want my mamma to come to her little Rose."

"Says her name's Rose," said Grandma Padgett, exchanging a flare of her gla.s.ses for a startled look from the landlady.

"She says her name's Rose," repeated the landlady, turning to the lawyer as a general public who ought to be informed. Robert and Corinne began to hover between the door and the lounge, vigilant at both extremes of their beat.

"Rose," repeated the lawyer, bending forward to inspect the child.

"Rose what? Have you any other name, my little girl?"

"I not your little girl," wept their excited patient. "I'm my mamma's little girl. Go away! you're an ugly papa."

Bobaday and Corinne chuckled at this accusation. Aunt Corinne could not bring herself to regard the lawyer as an ally. If he wished to play a proper part he should have gone out and driven the doorkeeper and all the rest of those show-people from Greenfield. Instead of that, he stood about, listening.

"I haven't even seen such people," murmured the landlady in reply to a whispered question from Grandma Padgett. "There was a young man came in to ask if we had more room, but I didn't like his looks and told him no, we had no more. Court-times we can fill our house if we want to. But I'm always particular. We don't take shows at all. The shows that come through here are often rough. There was a magic-lantern man we let put up with us. But circuses and such things can go to the regular tavern, says I. And if the regular tavern can't accommodate them, it's only twenty mile to Injunop'lis."

"I was afraid they might have got into the house," said Grandma Padgett. "And I wouldn't know what to do. I couldn't give her up to them again, when the bare sight throws her into spasms, unless I was made to do it."