The songs, too, were funny.
"He sings like a real colored boy," said Sue.
"Maybe he is," her father observed.
"Yes, and maybe he's only blacked up, like most of them," suggested Mrs.
Brown. "Can you tell if he looks anything like Fred Ward, Daddy?"
"No, I can't be sure that he does," said Mr. Brown. "I never saw much of
the missing boy, you know; and I certainly would not know him if he were
blackened like a negro. This one, if he is not really colored, is well
made-up. He would fool almost any one."
"Is there any way we could find out?" asked Mrs. Brown. "We ought to do
all we can to find Fred for his parents."
"I'll see what I can do after the exhibition is over," promised Mr.
Brown. "I'll ask the proprietor of the medicine wagon if I can get a
chance. But I'll have to do it when the banjo player can't hear, for in
case he should be Fred--which I hardly think can be true--but if it
should be he, and he heard me asking, he'd run away again."
"Yes, I suppose he would," said Mrs. Brown with a sigh. "Oh, how foolish
boys are sometimes. They don't know what is good for them," and she
looked at Bunny, as if wondering if the time would ever come when he
would not be a "mother's boy.
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