The Indiana village did not differ greatly from the Ohio village
situated on the 'pike. There were always the church with a bonny
little belfry, and the schoolhouse more or less mutilated as to its
weather boarding. The 'pike was the principal street, and such houses
as sat at right angles to it, looked lonesome, and the dirt roads
weedy or dusty.
Greenfield was a country seat and had a court house surrounded by
trees. It looked long and straggling in the summer dusk. Zene, riding
ahead to secure lodgings, came back as far as the culvert to tell
Grandma Padgett there was no room at the tavern Court, was session,
and the lawyers on the circuit filled the house. But there was
another place, near where they now halted, that sometimes took in
travellers for accommodation's sake. He pointed it out, a roomy
building with a broad flight of leg steps leading up to the front
doors. Zene said it was not a tavern, but rather nicer than a tavern.
He had already prevailed on the man and woman keeping it to take in
his party.
Robert and aunt Corinne scampered up the log steps and Grandma
Padgett led Fairy Carrie; after them. A plain tidy woman met them at
the door and took them into a square room.
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