She brought Betsey the package, rather apologetic that it should prove larger than she had intended.
“I just tucked some duck eggs into the box, too. This is an uncommon breed that Joe got me, and splendid for market. I’m sorry it’s such a big bundle and the way home so long. I do wish the horses weren’t all in the field or Joe could take you home in the cart. You tell Miss Reynolds that those are with Clara Bassett’s love and that she will never forget her. I will be over to see her myself, first chance I get.”
Her kind hostess stood watching her from the gate as Elizabeth set off homeward. She had been directed to take the path along the river bank and then turn into a cart track that went over the hill and she had been warned that it was “quite a ways.” She discovered herself to be more tired after her long chase than she had thought, and beginning to feel a few aches due to her jarring tumble over the wall. She tramped steadily onward, nevertheless, Dick riding on her shoulder and the bundle of eggs tucked under her arm. It was of awkward shape and size, and would slip no matter how she held it.
The path along the river did not seem to be taking her in the direction of home and it was discouragingly rough and stony. She sat down to rest, with her feet dangling over the bank above the water and began to think over what she had been hearing.
“Everybody who knows Miss Miranda seems to want to make her happy,” she reflected, “and the strange thing is that nobody can!”
She sat for some time listening to the cool splashing water slip away below her feet, then with a sigh got up to go onward.
“I think I’d better take a short cut across the fields,” she decided. “It won’t be half so far and I’m sure I can find the way. If only I don’t drop the eggs.”
The flight of a crow is supposed to be a direct route, but not the way of a crow pursued by a flock of his jealous kin. The chase that Dick had led her had been so crooked and confused that it was difficult indeed to find which was the shortest way home. She pushed through hedges, hurried down by-paths, stumbled into tangles of wild blackberry vines, but was not at all sure that she was making any real progress.
The round wooded hills and squares of well-kept field and meadow all looked much alike to her. A big house among the trees, showing tall stacks of brick chimneys and a tiled roof was, moreover, so completely unfamiliar that she became still more perplexed. The afternoon was coming to an end, she grew wearier and wearier and the box in her arms seemed continually heavier and more awkward. At last she stood still, having completely lost her bearings.
“Oh, Dick,” she said forlornly, “can’t you show me the way home?”