You can guess what happened. Both little girls fell asleep. Rosa Marie, flat on her stomach, pillowed her head on her chubby arms. Mabel's head, drooping slowly forward, grew heavier and heavier until finally it touched her knees.
An hour later, the sleepy head had grown so very heavy that it pulled Mabel right off the box and tumbled her over in a confused, astonished heap on the ground.
"My goodness!" gasped Mabel, still on hands and knees. "Where am I, anyway? Is this Saturday or Sunday? Why! It's all dark. This—this isn't my room—why! why! I'm outdoors! How did I get outdoors?"
Mabel stood up, took a step forward, stumbled over Rosa Marie and went down on all-fours.
"What's that!" gasped bewildered Mabel, groping with her hands. She felt the rough black head, the plump body, the round legs, the bare feet of her sleeping charge. Memory returned.
"Why! It's Rosa Marie, and we're waiting here by the lake for her mother. It—ugh! It must be midnight!"
But it wasn't. It was just exactly twenty minutes after seven o'clock but, with the autumn sun gone early to bed, it certainly seemed very much later. The house was still deserted.
"I guess," said Mabel, feeling about in the dark for Rosa Marie's fat hand, "we'd better go home—or some place. Come, Rosa Marie, wake up. I'm going to take you home with me. Oh, please wake up. There's nobody here but us. It's way in the middle of the night and there might be anything in those awfully black bushes."
But Rosa Marie, deprived of her noontide nap, slumbered on. Mabel shook her.