“Then let Lily and me stay and watch the car,” urged Florence. “The rest of you go in—we don’t dare take any chances!”
Putting aside their own sense of fatigue, the girls followed the children back to the building, and gave them a thorough demonstration of scouting, explaining as they proceeded. Their audience was thrilled; with shining eyes they followed every detail, and showed such intense gratitude that the girls forgot all about their weariness.
It was after ten o’clock when they finally left the building and climbed into the machine once more. Florence had turned it around, and sat at the wheel in readiness. They all felt that it would be best to get back to the Lincoln Highway again, and there hunt for a place to spend the night, instead of risking the unknown boarding house the children had mentioned.
It was not, however, such an easy task as they had hoped; in the darkness they failed to recognize any of the land-marks which they had noted in the twilight, and because of the roughness of the road they were forced to proceed slowly and carefully.
“I think we have passed it,” remarked Florence, after they had been driving for some time.
“But we couldn’t have!” protested Alice. “Even in the dark we would be able to see any road crossing this.”
“Then we’ve strayed on to another road. I’m sure we weren’t so far from the highway; we should have crossed it long ago.”
“And I’m sure there was no road leading from this that we could stray into,” insisted Alice.
“Then why don’t we come to it?”
“Maybe Aunt Emeline had it moved back a few miles, just to annoy us,” suggested Ethel.