"Will it be long before it is morning?" asked Billykins in a voice of misery. "I am quite dreadfully cold, and most horribly hungry."
"So am I, and I wish that we were back at Mrs. Warner's," said Don in a dismal tone.
"I don't expect that it will be very long now, and if you curl up under this rug, if it is a rug, you may go to sleep, and then you will forget about being hungry," said Nealie, gripping something which felt like drapery, and dragging it towards her.
"That is my frock!" cried Sylvia. "Creep in here, close to me, Billykins, and then you will help to keep poor Ducky warm. There is room for Don too. Don't sit on more of the lump sugar than you can help, as it is very uncomfortable, I find; but if you were to eat some of the lumps, perhaps they would warm you a little, for I have heard somewhere that there is a great deal of warmth in sugar."
"I have found a lump. Will you have it, Nealie?" asked Ducky, groping in the darkness for her elder sister, and feeling that, of them all, it was Nealie who most needed comfort just then.
"I don't want it, thank you, dearie," answered Nealie, her anxieties being too heavy for sugar to alleviate.
"Here is another; and—oh, I say, I have just put my fingers into something horribly sticky! What can it be?" and Ducky stuffed her fist in the face of Billykins, for it was so dark that she could not see where she was thrusting it.
"Look out!" he exclaimed in an offended tone, then suddenly changed to a shout of joy. "Oh, it is marmalade, and it is all over my mouth! Have you got any more of it, Nealie?"
"Of course. There was a pot in the grocery box, and I had forgotten about it, or we would have had it to help out with supper, and then it would not have been wasted in this fashion," replied Nealie, feeling that she would like to indulge in a good cry over the ruin which had come upon them.
"It won't be wasted if only I can find where that pot is. Can you guide my hand, Ducky, to find it?" asked Don eagerly.