“Though what he could do more than we are doing ourselves, I don’t see,” Mrs. Heard sighed.
“We are not doing anything!” cried Agnes, beginning to cry again. “I believe if they’d have let me go with them into the woods last night, I could have found poor, precious little Dot and Tessie. What shall we do——”
“I’ll go with you, too, Aggie,” declared Sammy, having hard work to keep back the tears himself. “I bet you and I can find ’em.”
“It is the easiest thing in the world to be a critic,” Ruth said quietly. “But we should first know how better to do a thing before finding fault with the person who has done it. I think——”
And just then Constable Munro and the big Gypsy appeared in their sitting-room, and immediately their despair was changed to joy. Neale came stumbling out of the bedroom, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, and led the cheering. For a few moments the automobile tourists certainly were quite beside themselves.
Nothing would do but all must run out to the encampment to get the lost little girls. And although King David started before them, the motor car passed him and his swift pacer on the road and arrived at the Gypsy encampment a good fifteen minutes before he appeared.
Tess and Dot, by this time, had become rather lachrymose. They dared not ask Mira again about their lost friends; and even the lapful of kittens palled at last on Dot. With the coming of the automobile, however, all this was changed. At once both Tess and Dot could see nothing but good in their friends, the Gypsies. Ruth and Agnes, with Sammy, had to be led all about the encampment, to see the pets and to learn how the Gypsies lived in their wagons and tents, and otherwise to be shown the wonders of the place. Mrs. Heard and Ruth ransacked their purses for pennies to distribute to the bare-legged children attached to the camp.
“And we were wild girls, too—for a little while,” said Dot. “Weren’t we, Tess?”
“Too bad you were so wild that I didn’t find you when I was over this way early this morning,” grumbled Neale O’Neil. “Anyway, if I hadn’t insisted on coming we wouldn’t have found the kids yet.”
“My! aren’t you smart?” scoffed Agnes, who felt happy enough to bicker with him now. “Well! somebody, I suppose, must blow a horn for you—why not yourself?”