“O, Aunt ’Ria, I should think you’d like to live out West!  Such splendid fruit cake!”

“I saw Fibby and my mamma make that,” said Flyaway, “out o’ cindamon and little clovers.”

“Clovers in cake?”

“Not red and white clovers; them little bitter kinds you know,” added the child, with a wry face.

There were four for each carriage.  Dotty rode with her father, Mrs. Clifford, and Katie.  Little Flyaway looked at the hired phaeton with contempt.

“It hasn’t any cap on, like my papa’s,” said she; but she was prevailed upon to ride in it because her mamma did.

Horace went with his father and the “cup and saucer,” as he called Grace and Cassy.  He was in a state of irritation because his idolized Topknot was in the other carriage.

“You can’t separate that cup and saucer,” growled he to himself.  “They’ll sit and talk privacy, I suppose; and I might have had Brown-brimmer if it hadn’t been for Cassy.”

CHAPTER VIII.

GOING NUTTING.

As they drove along “the plank road,” farther and farther away from the city, Dotty saw more clearly than ever the wide difference between Indiana and Maine.

“Why, papa,” said she, “did you ever breathe such a dust?  It seems like snuff.”

“It makes us almost as invisible as the ‘tarn cap’ we read of in German fairy tales,” said Mrs. Clifford, tucking her brown veil under her chin.

She and Mr. Parlin both encouraged Dotty to talk; for they liked to hear her exclamations of wonder at things which to them seemed common-place enough.

“What did you call this road, Aunt ’Ria?  Didn’t you say it was made of boards?  I don’t see any boards.”

“The planks were put down so long ago, Dotty, that they are overlaid with earth.”

“But what did they put them down for?”

“You musser ask so many kestions, Dotty,” said Flyaway, severely; “you say ‘what’ too many times.”

“The planks were laid down, Dotty, on account of the depth of the mud.”

“Mud, Aunt ’Ria?”

“Yes, dear, dusty as it is now, at some seasons of the year the roads are so muddy that you might lose off your overshoes if it were not for the large beams which bridge over the crossings.”

“That reminds me,” said Mr. Parlin, “of the man who was seen sinking in the mud, and, when some one offered to help him out, he replied, cheerfully, ‘O, I shall get through; I have a horse under me.’”

“Why, was the horse ’way down out of sight, papa?”

“Where was the hossy, Uncle Eddard?”

“It was only a story, children.  If the man said there was a horse under him, it was a figure of speech, which we call hyperbole; he only meant to state in a funny way that the mud was excessively deep.”

“Is it right to tell hyperblees, papa?  Because Jennie Vance tells them a great deal.  I didn’t know the name of them before.”