Читать книгу A Yankee Girl at Antietam онлайн

27 страница из 31

“What can be the matter now?” exclaimed Mrs. Miller, starting toward the door.

“Ole Miss—Ole Miss! We’s robbed! Yas’m!” exclaimed Dulcie, nearly breathless. “My roas’ chicken bin stole. Yas’m! An’ I cayn’t lay eyes on my egg baskit, an’ my bread am took!” and Dulcie stood rolling her frightened eyes and trembling with excitement.

“Why, Dulcie! It can’t be! I have never had a thing taken from the house in all my life,” declared Mrs. Miller, and with Dulcie beside her she hurried off to the kitchen.

Roxy gave a little exclamation, and Mrs. Delfield hastened to assure her that probably Dulcie was mistaken, and had forgotten where she had set the food. But the little girl seemed so troubled, so grave and quiet, that her mother felt anxious.

“Don’t you want to finish the ‘Circus,’ dear?” she suggested. “You’ll need a herd of camels, several elephants, beside lions and zebras.”

But Roxy shook her head. Not even her beloved “Circus,” on which she had worked several hours each day since her arrival at Grandma Miller’s, seemed to interest her. When she had given the man the basket of food she had not thought of the fact that it would be promptly missed, and that Dulcie would make such an outcry over it. But, as no special person was suspected of taking it, Roxy quickly decided that all was well. Dulcie would scold and wonder about her loss, and Grandma Miller would endeavor to find out who had really made off with the chicken, but no real harm had been done, so in a little while Roxy was quite ready to follow her mother’s suggestion and begin on the animals that were to be a part of the “paper circus”; and when Mrs. Delfield followed Mrs. Miller to the kitchen to find out what had really occurred Roxy was happily at work near one of the wide windows that looked across the green wheat field toward the distant mountains.