Lucinda was quilting a big bedquilt, which was stretched out on chairs and long wooden bars, and took up so much of the room in the kitchen it was hard to get about.
"Mercy, no, child!" said Lucinda. "I hain't got nothin' to do but this quilt, an' I expect you ain't much of a hand at quiltin'. 'Twan't my notion to have ye come,—not but what I'm always glad to see ye; ye know that,—but I wan't afraid to be alone. But Billy he's took it into his head 'tain't safe for me to be alone here nights. Now if there's any thing ye want to do, ye jest go 'n' do it."
"Would it make any difference to you if I were gone all day, so I am here to sleep?" said Nelly.
"Why, no," replied Lucinda; "not a bit. Did ye want to go into the town?"
"No," said Nelly; "but I wanted to find a place I saw once, on the way there. It was a real deep place, almost sunk down in the ground, full of pines and bushes: a real pretty place. But it wasn't on the road. I don't know 's I can find it; but I'd like to."
"All right," said Lucinda: "you go off. I'll give ye some lunch in case ye get hungry. Ye won't be lonesome, will ye, without Rob?"
"Oh, no!" said Nelly: "I like to be all alone out doors."
Then she bade Lucinda good-by, and set off. For a half mile or so, she walked in the road toward Rosita. She recollected that she had passed Lucinda's before she turned off from the road. But the more she tried to remember the precise spot where she had turned off the more confused she became. At last she sprang out of the road, on the left hand side, and began running as fast as she could.
"I may as well strike off in one place as another," she thought, "since I can't remember. It cannot be very far from here."
She climbed one steep hill, and ran down into the ravine beyond it; then another hill, and another ravine,—no black stones. The sun was by this time high, and very hot. Nelly had done some severe climbing.