“Oh, dear!” sighed Dot, for at least the twentieth time, and with lapsing interest in the whale. “Oh, dear! I wish Tom Jonah were with us.”
“So do I! So do I!” agreed Tess, for as dusk came on she, like the smallest Corner House girl, was becoming truly frightened.
The disturbance in the bushes was repeated, and the children tried to run. A loud bell jangled—a most annoying bell; and in the distance a voice sounded:
“So, boss! So, boss! So, boss!”
It only frightened Tess and Dot the more to hear such strange sounds. They had never before heard the cows called home. And, besides, after their recent experience, they would have been only the more disturbed had they been aware that the thrashing in the bushes was Sukey, getting ready to go up to the bars to be milked.
No house did they see, however; not even a barn. They were on a back road, very seldom traveled, and the farms, what few there were in the neighborhood, faced on other highways.
The children trudged on, hand in hand, both crying now. Tess was weeping softly; but Dot was crying aloud, not caring who heard her.
When they came to a field beside the road, Tess stared all about for a light. But there was no beckoning lamp in a farmhouse window; nor even a flickering lantern to point the way to the farm outbuildings.
The streak of violet, shading to light blue, that evening had painted along the horizon with her careless brush, disappeared. Tall, black figures of trees upreared themselves between the children and the sky, and seemed to stalk nearer, threateningly.
A great nightbird floated out of the wood and swept low across the field with a “swish, swish, swish” of powerful wings. When it rose into the trees again it said: