Bobaday was very still, lest his grandmother in the tent, or Zene in the remoter wagon, should insist on his retiring to his uneasy bed again. He got enough of the carriage in daytime, having counted all its buttons up and down and crosswise. The smell of the leather and lining cloth was mixed with every odor of the journey. One can have too much of a very easy, well-made carriage.
The firelight revealed him in his thoughtful mood: a very white boy with glistening hair and expanding large eyes of a gray and velvet texture. Some light eyes have a thin and sleepy surface like inferior qualities of lining silk; and you cannot tell whether the expression or the humors of the eye are at fault. But Nature, or his own meditations on what he read and saw in this delicious world, had given to Bobaday's irises a softness like the pile of gray velvet, varied sometimes by cinnamon-colored shades.
His eyes reflected the branches, the other campfires, and many wagons. It gave him the sensation of again reading for the first time one of grandfather's Peter Parley books about the Indians, or Mr. Irving's story of Dolph Heyleger, where Dolph approaches Antony Vander Heyden's camp. He saw the side of one wagon-cover dragged at and a little night-capped head stuck out.
“Bobaday!” whispered aunt Corinne, creeping on tiptoe toward him, and anxious to keep him from exclaiming when he saw her.
“What did you get up for?” he whispered back.
“What did _you_ get up for?” retaliated aunt Corinne.
Robert Day made room for her on the log under the canopy, and she leaned down and laced her shoes after being seated. “Ma Padgett's just as tight asleep! What'd she say if she knew we wasn't in bed!”
It was so exciting and so nearly wicked to be out of bed and prowling when their elders were asleep, they could not possibly enjoy the sin in silence.
“Ain't it nice?” whispered aunt Corinne. “I saw you fixin' this little tent, and then I sl-ip-ped up and hooked some of my clothes on, and didn't dast to breathe 'fear Ma Padgett'd hear me. There must be lots of children in the camp.”
“Do you s'pose there's any gipsy folks along?”
“Do 'now,” whispered Bobaday, his tone inclining to an admission that gipsy folks might be along.