"I see nothing to laugh at," exclaimed Charlotte, pettishly, detecting those signs of merriment in my voice; "it's the most provoking thing in the world, I think. There seems no end of our troubles this evening! I am sure, long as I live, I shall never forget this odious walk!"
"We can't do better, both of us, than remember it," I answered; "for my part, I shall always strive to keep in mind the lesson it has taught me—not again under any circumstances, however pressing, to allow myself to disregard the voice of dear uncle or aunt, let it be on the most apparently trifling matters. Witness what our disobedience has cost us this evening! If we had attended to uncle's warning not to leave the garden, what an amount of fatigue, distress and terror it would have saved us!"
"There! don't waste time talking and lecturing, Mechie; what good will that do now?" cried Charlotte, impatiently. "How are we to get over this pitfall of a bridge now that it is so dark? That's the thing to be considered at present."
Charlotte stepped close to the plank, and going down upon her knees partly dragged herself and partly crawled over in safety to the opposite side, then springing up, cried out triumphantly, "There, Miss Mechie, what do you say to that? here I am, you see!"
Adopting the same mode of proceeding, I also effected a secure passage, though it was certainly with fear and trembling I did so. It is strange, I thought, that Charlotte, who throughout our previous adventures betrayed so much nervous fear, should on this quite as trying occasion prove herself possessed of considerably more courage and firmness than I. "The battle is not always to the strong, nor the race to the swift," I thought to myself; both would as it were have been lost in our ease this evening had the final victory rested with me, for I should never have been ingenious or brave enough of myself to conceive and practice such an unprecedented method to meet the difficulty but for Lotty's example.
CHAPTER VI.
"Why, Charlotte! why, Mechie! my dear children, where have you been?" broke in the anxious voice of Uncle Rossiter, who hastened forward from a side path to meet us.
"Oh, we very foolishly, and very wrongly too, forgot your advice, and went out on the Flats and lost our way, uncle," cried Charlotte, running to him and putting her arm within his; and as we proceeded to the hotel she continued in an off-hand manner, which somehow quite disconcerted me by its fluent flippancy, describing our having tired of the garden, and how, when upon the Flats, I had been so enraptured at sight of the beautiful flowers and occupied in gathering them that she had not liked to disturb me; moreover, she was highly gratified herself, and so it came to pass that advice and all else were forgotten, and on and on we wandered.