“Heigho! I guess we’d better be going back. The man is putting up his monkey, he isn’t going to play any more, it must be nearly supper time. We must go back.”
“Yes we must,” agreed Natalie, earnestly. “You walk between us, Jessie Trent. I’m so glad you’ve come to our school. We’ll have the very nicest times together, we three. Won’t we, Aubrey?”
“Indeed, we will,” answered she.
But her companions noticed that her voice had lost its usual enthusiasm, and that she now paused to look about her with a puzzled air. As a leader she suddenly felt responsible for her comrades in mischief and remarked, rather soberly:
“This isn’t the way. We’re going wrong. The numbers on the houses—I didn’t know there were such poor houses anywhere, so dingy and so small; but the numbers run up high, as you go north. I know that. In time we’ll get to Madame Mearsom’s if we watch the numbers.”
Unfortunately to have watched the numbers of the streets would have been the safer way, than those upon the houses. These continually grew larger and larger and as constantly more uninviting. Finally, poor Aubrey stopped short. Her ruddy face had grown quite pale, and her breath came fast, as she announced:
“Girls, we are—lost! But we mustn’t get scared nor say a word to anybody, nor ask a single question. We must just find our own way home. Else we’ll be taken to a station-house, or worse—be kidnapped! That’s what my father is always afraid of, that somebody will kidnap me, big as I am, so as to make him pay a lot of money to get me back again.”
“What’s ‘kidnapped?’” asked Jessica in awed and wondering ignorance. Nor did her heart grow lighter when these two, long ago enlightened on that dread subject by the words of maids and nurses, explained to her its awful meaning.
“Then we mustn’t ask, as you say. Else I would have called that policeman yonder, just as Mr. Hale and my Cousin Margaret always bade me do if I was in trouble. We’ll just walk right straight along, with our heads high up as if we weren’t afraid and didn’t care at all, and after a while we’ll get somewhere!”
“O Jessica, you darling! You’re just the nicest ever. You give me lots of courage. Yes, we’ll do that. Stop crying, Natalie. Come on.”