"I won't try that if there is any outlet to this ravine—and there must be, of course. Say! do you hear that silly girl?"
"Who? Libbie?" Betty began to giggle. "She is going to make a hero of you, Bob, whether you want to be or not. And you are——"
"Now, don't you begin," growled Bob.
"I never saw such a modest fellow," laughed Betty, giving his free hand a little squeeze.
"Huh! Libbie will want to put a laurel wreath on my brow if I climb up there. See! There is a bunch of laurels right over there—those glossy-leaved, runty sort of trees. Not for me! I am going to lead Jim out ahead, and you climb up, if you want to, and come along with the rest of the bunch. Ride my horse, if you will, Betty."
"So you'd run away from a girl!" scoffed Betty, but laughing. "You are no hero, Bob Henderson."
"Sure I'm not," he agreed cheerfully. "And I'd run away from a girl like Libbie any day. I wonder how Timothy Derby stands for her. But he's almost as mushy as a soft pumpkin!"
With this disrespectful observation Bob started off with the gray horse and Betty scrambled up the bank down which she had plunged so heedlessly.
Bobby was one of those who had dismounted at the brink of the ravine, and she held out a brown hand to Betty as the latter scrambled up the last yard or two of the steep bank and helped her to a secure footing.
"Are you all right, Betty dear?" she cried.