"I wish we could see the cover ahead of us. We don't want to resk
gettin' separated," said Grandma Padgett.

Yet she turned the horses westward with a degree of confidence, and
drove up into a hilly country which soon hid the sun. The long shades
crept past and behind them. There was a country church, with a
graveyard full of white stones nearly smothered in grass and briers.
And there was a school-house in an open space, with a playground
beaten bare and white in the midst of a yellow mustard jungle. They
saw some loiterers creeping home, carrying dinner-pail and basket,
and taking a languid last tag of each other. The little girls looked
up at the passing carriage from their sunbonnet depths, but the boys
had taken off their hats to slap each other with: they looked at the
strangers, round-eyed and ready to smile, and Robert and Corinne
nodded. Grandma Padgett bethought herself to ask if any of them had
seen a moving wagon pass that way. The girls stared bashfully at each
other and said "No, ma'am," but the boys affirmed strongly that they
had seen two moving wagons go by, one just as school was out, and the
boldest boy of all made an effort to remember the white and gray
horses.

The top of a hill soon stood between these children, and the
travellers, but in all the vista beyond there was no glimpse of Zene.

Grandma Padgett felt anxious, and her anxiety increased as the dusk
thickened.

"There don't seem to be any taverns along this road," she said; "and
I hate to ask at any farmer's for accommodations over night. We don't
know the neighborhood, and a body hates to be a bother."