"It would be fun," she sighed. "They did tease me dreadfully, some of the girls. You see, the Hoovers didn't have so very much money, and my clothes were mostly old things that Maw made over to fit me when she was through with them."
"You could go back in better dresses than any of those Hedgeville girls ever even saw, Bessie. And just think of how that horrid Jake Hoover would feel then."
"Oh, well, there's no use thinking about it, Dolly. It won't ever happen. So I shan't be disappointed, anyhow."
"Well, it might happen and I think it's simply great to dream about things that might happen to you. It doesn't do any harm, and it's awfully good fun."
"You do the dreaming, Dolly, and tell me about your dreams. You can do it better than I could. I'm no good at dreaming that way at all."
"All right, that's a bargain. And right now I guess we'd better stop thinking about dreams and attend to pathfinding. Here's a turn. Which way ought we to go?"
"Straight ahead, I'm sure," said Bessie. "See how the trail narrows in the other direction, and it doesn't look as if it had ever been made like the main trail. It's more as if people had just broken through one after another, until a sort of trail was made."
"Yes, and it isn't straight ahead, either. When there's a big tree in the way, the trail goes around it, and on the regular trail the guides went along a straight line and chopped down trees when they had to."
"All right. Give me the hatchet, and I'll mark the proper way to go."
Deftly Bessie, who had had long practice in the use of a hatchet when she lived with the Hoovers, cut off a strip of bark on a tree at the meeting point of the two trails, so that it formed a plain and unmistakable guide to anyone who knew anything at all of woodcraft.