The landing was made, both horses leaping up
as if from an abyss. The carriage cracked, and when its wheels once
more ground the dry sand, Grandma Padgett trembled awhile, and moved
her lips before replying to the children's exclamations.
"We've been delivered from a great danger," she said. "And that
miserable man let us drive into it without warning!"
"If I's big enough," said Robert Day, "I'd go back and thrash him."
"It ill becomes us," rebuked Grandma Padgett, "to give place to
wrath after escaping from peril. But if this is the trap he sets for
his house on the hill, I hope he has been caught in it himself
sometime!"
"Where'll we go now?" Corinne wailed, having considered it was time
to begin crying. "I'm drownded, and my teeth knock together, I'm
gettin' so cold!"
They paused at the top of the hill, Corinne still lamenting.
"I don't want to stop here," said Grandma Padgett, adding, "but I
suppose we must."
The house was large and weather-beaten; its gable-end turned toward
the road. The "feefty famblies" had left no trace of domestic life.
Grass and weeds grew to the lower windows. The entrance was at one
side through a sea of rank growths.
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