Everyone was hungry and tired, and sickened with the jolting of the wagon. The guide clambered aboard. Just as he set the horses in motion, Mrs. Trailey opened her mouth to utter some new profundity or other, when the wagon rather opportunely bumped over a couple or so of very large badger holes, the consequent shaking causing her words of wisdom to be reserved for a future occasion.
"We'll come an' find our land ourselves, termorrer," said Sam to Bert, who was blissfully unconscious of everything except the nearness of Esther, with whom he had been exchanging some exquisite silences.
Although they knew their exact whereabouts on the map, finding their way about proved anything but easy. Sam was for travelling back along their own wheel marks, but the guide, who on his step-mother's side must have been one of jolly old Euclid's direct descendants, said he could hit camp in a straight line, and thus save several miles.
Presently they stopped again to check up their position.
"Anyway, there's the sun," said the vocational contortionist, squinting upwards. He became frightfully meditative, first consulting his watch, then the synthetic compass.
"Yus, that's the sun," agreed Sam, cocking an eye at the dazzling orb.
"And it's three-thirty, ain't it?" added the guide, pulling his watch out again and surveying it abstractedly.
"No, it ain't; it's six o'clock," Sam contradicted, and he showed the other a large, handsome chronometer enclosed in a dust-proof celluloid case which any near-sighted person might excusably have taken to be an old-fashioned warming-pan. To settle the dispute, they appealed to Trailey, who withdrew a beautiful gold timepiece from his waistcoat-pocket.
"Ten o'clock," said he; then, holding the watch to his ear, with a sceptical look on his face, and a distrustful feeling in his stomach, he added: "Ah! wait a minute. I forgot. My watch has never gone since I fell into the slough."
"Wot's yourn say?" asked Sam, this time appealing to Bert, who was engrossed with Esther at the rear of the wagon. Breaking off in the middle of a sweet nothing, that young gentleman replied: