“There you are! Now do as you’re a mind to. We’ve got to hunt for Josiah. Tom, you go ’round by the water, an’ I’ll skin up this way.”
“Where shall I meet you?” Tom asked, as he turned to obey.
“Down by the dock. I’ll go there if I find ’em, an’ you must do the same.”
Bill made no proposition to aid his friends; but, with his ticket in his hand, went slowly toward the steamboat landing, his eyes fixed upon the ground, as if afraid he might see the lost ones, and thus terminate the search too soon to please him, for he was anxious his friends should, as he expressed it, “get enough of taggin’ ’round with a girl.”
Half an hour later Bob and Tom met at the pier, but neither had seen Josiah, and both felt seriously alarmed.
“Do you s’pose there’s any chance he’ll go home?” Tom asked.
“No, I don’t reckon he’d be likely to do that, ’cause I’ve got the tickets, an’ he wouldn’t wanter put out so much money for nothin’.”
“Then I’m afraid it’ll be a good deal as Bill says. We shall spend the rest of the day, an’ part of the night, huntin’ for ’em.”
“That won’t be such an awful long while, for it’s pretty nigh dark now.”
“What are we goin’ to do?”