Then he made the dust smoke under
his feet as a sudden June shower will do for a few seconds, and
usually overtook the carriage with all of his tongue unfurled and his
lungs working like a furnace. Johnson reproved him with a glance, and
he at once dropped his tail and trotted beside Johnson, as if
throwing himself on that superior dog for support in the hour of
affliction.
At noon no trace of Robert and Corinne had been seen. Grandma
Padgett halted, and when Zene came up she said:
"We'll eat a cold bite right here by the road, and then go on until
sunset. If we don't find them, we'll turn back to town and take
another direction."
They ate a cold bite, brought ready packed from the Richmond tavern.
The horses were given scant time for feeding, and drank wherever they
could find water along the road.
Cloudless as the day was, Grandma Padgett's spectacles had never
made any landscape look as blue as this one which she followed until
sunset. Sometimes it was blurred by a mist, but she wiped it off the
glasses.
At sunset they had not seen a track which might be taken for Robert
or Corinne's. The grasshoppers were lonesome. There was a great void
in the air, and the most tuneful birds complained from the fence-rails.
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