rg that
should be decisively urgent, but she only said:

"I'm very sorry you can't stay."

My hopes fell like bricks and vanished like bubbles.

The Dunkelbergs left us with pleasant words. They had asked me to shake
hands with Sally, but I had clung to my aunt's cloak and firmly refused
to make any advances. Slowly and without a word we walked across the
park toward the tavern sheds. Hot tears were flowing down my
cheeks--silent tears! for I did not wish to explain them. Furtively I
brushed them away with my hand. The odor of frying beef steak came out
of the open doors of the tavern. It was more than I could stand. I
hadn't tasted fresh meat since Uncle Peabody had killed a deer in
midsummer. He gave me a look of understanding, but said nothing for a
minute. Then he proposed:

"Mebbe we better git dinner here?"

Aunt Deel hesitated at the edge of the stable yard, surrounded as she
was by the aroma of the fleshpots, then:

"I guess we better go right home and save our money, Peabody--ayes!"
said she. "We told Mr. and Mrs. Horace Dunkelberg that we was goin' home
and they'd think we was liars."

"We orto have gone with `em," said Uncle Peabody as he unhitched the
horses.

"Well, Peabody Baynes, they didn't appear to be very anxious to have
us," Aunt Deel answered with a sigh.

We had started away up the South road when, to my surprise, Aunt Deel
mildly attacked the Dunkelbergs.

"These here village folks like to be waited on--ayes!--an' they're awful
anxious you should come to see 'em when ye can't--ayes!--but when ye git
to the village they ain't nigh so anxious--no they ain't!"

Uncle Peabody made no answer, but sat looking forward thoughtfully and
tapping the dashboard with his whipstock, and we rode on in a silence
broken only by the creak of the evener and the sound of the horses'
hoofs in the sand.

In the middle of the great cedar swamp near Little River Aunt Deel got
out the lunch basket and I sat down on the buggy bottom between their
legs and leaning against the dash. So disposed we ate our luncheon of
fried cakes and bread and butter and maple sugar and cheese. The road
was a straight alley through the evergreen forest, and its grateful
shadow covered us. When we had come out into the hot sunlight by the
Hale farm both my aunt and uncle complained of headache. What an
efficient cure for good health were the doughnuts and cheese and sugar,
especially if they were mixed with the idleness of a Su