“Ho! what made you girls run so?” asked Phil, recovering himself first.
“Well, I like that! what made you run so yourself, Mr. Phil? I guess you were as frightened as anybody,” said Daisy, indignantly.
“’Fraid? I wasn’t a bit afraid. I just ran after you girls to tell you there wasn’t any danger, but you ran so fast, and I was tired—”
“Oh, tired!” chorused the girls, scornfully. “Seems to us you managed to keep pretty well ahead.”
“Jove, boys, where do you think we are?” exclaimed Phil, abruptly changing the subject.
“We’re just exactly where Cricket fell in the brook this morning.”
And so they were. Thinking it was afternoon they had turned in the direction of the sun, meaning to go west. Of course they had really gone east, since it was still morning, and here they were, not ten minutes’ walk from home.
They stood looking at one another in perfect silence.
“Our whole day wasted,” said Eunice, at length, very soberly.
“It must be most supper-time, and we haven’t any lunch left,” commented Harry, surveying the melancholy collection of empty pails and baskets.