There
used to be a great deal of wagoning and stage-coaching, and driving
droves of horses and cattle by that road. Perhaps, suggested aunt
Corinne, Fairy Carrie would watch the 'pike for the Padgett family,
but Bobaday ridiculed the idea. When he grew up a man he meant to go
to Baltimore but the railroad would be his choice of routes.
Both Robert and his aunt were glad the day they stopped for dinner
near a toll-house, and the woman came and invited them to dine with
her.
The house stood on the edge of the 'pike, with its gate-pole ready
to be lowered by a rope, looking like any other toll place. But the
woman was very brisk and Yankee-like, and different from the many
slatternly persons who had before taken toll. She said her people
came from "down East," but she herself was born in Ohio. She thought
the old lady would like a cup of strong tea, and her dinner was just
ready, and it did get lonesome eating by a body's self day after day.
The Padgetts added their store to the square table set in a back
room, and the toll-woman poured her steaming tea into cups covered
with flower sprigs. Everything about her was neat and compact as a
ship's cabin. Her bed stood in one corner, curtained with white
dimity.
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