The child shook her head and broke away from the girls to show her treasures to her mother, who was too busy, however, to pay much attention.
“It’s a shame we haven’t anything for the little boy!” exclaimed Cathalina. “I haven’t another thing in my coat pocket but a handkerchief.”
“I believe I’ve got one of those pencils,” said Hilary, “and I put a little memorandum book in my pocket this morning. I though we’d certainly see something new, but I haven’t made a note in it.”
Hilary searched her pockets to see if she, too, had brought one of the pretty pencils, for she usually preferred a more substantial kind and had provided one of that sort for this trip. But she found a bright blue one, which she hastened to offer to the small boy with the memorandum book, and received a beaming smile as a reward.
By this time the farmer himself had joined the company and took the empty glasses from Miss Perin and Betty, who happened to be standing together. “Did you hear about the bomb explosion?” he asked.
“No, where?”
“O, a piece up the road, about ten mile, I reckon,—railroad bridge. Something went wrong and it wasn’t hurt much, but a troop train was about due. They’ll have to guard all them bridges. Some queer doin’s around here.”
Betty’s mind immediately flew to the cave and the queer men. Miss Perin’s brow contracted. “You wouldn’t think there was anybody who could do anything like that.”
“Easier to kill ’em off here before they get over, I suppose—a bombed train or a ship sunk by a submarine, not much difference.”
The girls settled for their milk and the contents of a jar of cookies, not a trace of which remained, and the cavalcade moved on, this time toward Greycliff. Cathalina and Betty fell back to the rear, though all the horses traveled at a pretty good pace, as horses do when their faces are turned homeward.