He soon returned with the canteen full of ice-cold water. His eyes were wide.
“Say, girls,” he began, “we can’t make it home tonight, can we? The sun’s going down west of our peak right this minute.”
“We didn’t expect to,” Meg replied. “Gerald, you come with me and we will bring in pine branches or kinnikinick, if we can find any, for our beds.”
From her knapsack Meg took a folding knife as she talked.
“Kinnikinick?” the boy gayly repeated. Everything that had happened now appeared to him in the light of a jolly adventure except, of course, Julie’s ankle, and she no longer seemed to be in pain. “What sort of a thing is that?”
Meg had led the way out of the cabin.
“Here’s some!” she shouted, and the boy raced over to find the girl whom he so admired bending over a dense evergreen vine.
“It’s prettier in winter,” she told him, “for then it has red berries among the bright green leaves. It makes a wonderful bed. It is so soft and springy.”
After half an hour of effort branches of pine and some of the kinnikinick were laid on the floor, Julie was made comfortable, but Jane would not lie down. She sat with her back against the wall holding the small girl’s head on her lap. Dan had been right. One could carve oneself after a model. Never, never again would she lose sight, she assured herself, of her chosen goal, which was to do in all things as her dear mother would have done.
As soon as the sun sank it began to grow dark. Meg had at once barred the door, and also she had examined the floor and walls to be sure that there was no yawning knothole large enough to admit a snake.