“Suppose yer sister finds it out?” sneered one.
“Aw—well—she jes’ ain’t go’n’ ter,” cried Willie, exasperated. “An’ what if she does? She runned away herself—didn’t she?”
The spirit of restlessness was strong in the Raby nature, it was evident. Willie was a born leader. The others trailed after him when he left the pathway that led directly back to Sunrise Farm, and pushed into the thicker wood in the direction he believed the stream lay.
The juvenile leader of the party did not know (how should he?) that just above the pond the stream which fed it made a sharp turn. Its waters came out of a deep gorge, lying in an entirely different direction from that toward which the “terrible twins” and their chums were aiming.
The little fellows plodded on for a long time, and the sun dropped suddenly behind the hills to the westward, and there they were—quite surprisingly to themselves—in a strange and fast-darkening forest.
CHAPTER XXIII—LOST
The girl visitors from Briarwood Hall did all they could to help the mistress of Sunrise Farm and Madge prepare for the evening festivities, and not alone in employing the attention of the six little girls from the orphanage.
There were the decorations to arrange, and the paper lanterns to hang, and the long tables on the porch to prepare for the supper. Twelve extra, hungry little mouths to feed was, of itself, a fact of no small importance.
When the wagon had come up from Caslon’s with the orphans, Mrs. Steele had thought it rather a liberty on the part of the farmer’s wife because she had, with the children, sent a great hamper of cakes, which she (Mrs. Caslon) herself had baked the day before.
But the cakes were so good, and already the children were so hungry, that the worried mistress of the big farm was thankful that these supplies were in her pantry.