and such a mow of hay as impressed him with the advantages of travel.
A hostler was forking down hay for the evening's feeding, and Robert
climbed to his side, upon which the hostler good-naturedly took him
by the shoulders and let him slide down and alight upon the spongy
pile below. This would have been a delightful sensation had Bobaday
not bitten his tongue in the descent. But he liked it better than the
house where his aunt Corinne wandered uneasily up stairs which were
hollowed in the middle of each step, and along narrow passages where
bits of plaster had fallen off.

There was a dulcimer in the room aunt Corinne occupied with her
mother. She took the hammer and beat on its rusty wires some time
before going to bed. It tinkled a plea to her to let it alone, but
what little girl could look at the queer instrument and keep her
hands off it? The landlady said it was left there by a travelling
showman who could not pay his board. He hired the bar-room to give a
concert in, and pasted up written advertisements of his performance
in various parts of the town. He sent free tickets to the preacher
and schoolmaster, and the landlord's family went in for nothing.
Nobody else came, though he played on the flute and harmonium,
besides the dulcimer, and sang _Lilly Dale_, and _Roll on,
Silver Moon_, so touchingly that the landlady wiped her eyes at
their mere memory. As he had no money to pay stage-fare further, and
the flute and harmonium--a small bellows organ without legs--were
easier to carry than the dulcimer, he left it and trudged eastward.
And no one at that tavern could tell whether he and his instruments
had perished piecemeal along the way, or whether he had found crowded
houses and forgotten the old dulcimer in the tide of prosperity.

Grandma Padgett's party ate breakfast before day, by the light of a