“He did not emerge from this until one morning toward the middle of fair-week, when all the rest of the family were away—­father and the bigger boys on the far-off upland meadows haying, and mother and the girls off blackberrying.  I was too little to be of any help, so I had been left to wait on gran’ther, and to set out our lunch of bread and milk and huckleberries.  We had not been alone half an hour when gran’ther sent me to extract, from under the mattress of his bed, the wallet in which he kept his pension money.  There was six dollars and forty-three cents—­he counted it over carefully, sticking out his tongue like a schoolboy doing a sum, and when he had finished he began to laugh and snap his fingers and sing out in his high, cracked old voice: 

“‘We’re goin’ to go a skylarkin’!  Little Jo Mallory is going to the county fair with his Granther Pendleton, an’ he’s goin’ to have more fun than ever was in the world, and he—­’

“‘But, gran’ther, father said we mustn’t!’ I protested, horrified.

“’But I say we shall!  I was your gre’t-gran’ther long before he was your feyther, and anyway I’m here and he’s not—­so, march!  Out to the barn!’

“He took me by the collar, and, executing a shuffling fandango of triumph, he pushed me ahead of him to the stable, where old white Peggy, the only horse left at home, looked at us amazed.

“‘But it’ll be twenty-eight miles, and Peg’s never driven over eight!’ I cried, my old-established world of rules and orders reeling before my eyes.

“‘Eight—­and—­twenty-eight!  But I—­am—­eighty-eight!’

“Gran’ther improvised a sort of whooping chant of scorn as he pulled the harness from the peg.  ’It’ll do her good to drink some pink lemonade—­old Peggy!  An’ if she gits tired comin’ home, I’ll git out and carry her part way myself!’

“His adventurous spirit was irresistible.  I made no further objection, and we hitched up together, I standing on a chair to fix the check-rein, and gran’ther doing wonders with his one hand.  Then, just as we were—­gran’ther in a hickory shirt, and with an old hat flapping over his wizened face, I bare-legged, in ragged old clothes—­so we drove out of the grassy yard, down the steep, stony hill that led to the main valley road, and along the hot, white turnpike, deep with the dust which had been stirred up by the teams on their way to the fair.  Gran’ther sniffed the air jubilantly, and exchanged hilarious greetings with the people who constantly overtook old Peg’s jogging trot.  Between times he regaled me with spicy stories of the hundreds of thousands—­they seemed no less numerous to me then—­of county fairs he had attended in his youth.  He was horrified to find that I had never been even to one.

“’Why, Joey, how old be ye?  ’Most eight, ain’t it?  When I was your age I had run away and been to two fairs an’ a hangin’.’ “’But didn’t they lick you when you got home?’ I asked shudderingly.