“We must have left it by the dry well, then,” said Eunice, turning. “We must go and find it. Now, we’re going home again,” she added to Mamie, “so you needn’t tag any more. Horrid little tag-tail, anyway.”
Cricket and Eunice ran back up the road, jumped over the fence, and raced across to the pasture. Much to their relief, the white envelope still lay where they had left it.
Cricket picked it up, and put it safely in her pocket this time, and then the children walked more deliberately back.
“Let’s get our eggs now,” Eunice said, as they passed near the barn, “and skip around to the store the back way and get some candy, so we’ll have it to eat on the way. I’m awfully hungry.”
“All right, and Mamie Hecker won’t see us, either,” assented Cricket, entirely forgetting her father’s order to do the errand first. So they turned towards the barns. They had to search some little time for eggs, for the hens were late about their usual duties.
“Plaguey things,” said Cricket, “and there’s lots of hens standing ’round doing nothing.”
“Oh, here’s a nest,” called Eunice, “with two eggs in it, and here’s a hen on—”
Cricket unceremoniously slipped her hand under the hen and whisked her off. A warm white egg lay in the nest.
“She was just going to cluck, anyway,” said Cricket, as the hen clucked indignantly. “Say, cut-a-cut-ca-da-cut, if you want to, and don’t scold so. Your egg is all right. Here’s another in this nest. That’s four. Come on.”
They went out the side-door of the barn, intending to run across the orchard and into the back door of the store, and then to take a cut over the fields to the main road again. This would bring them out below the Heckers’ house.