"How are we going to get home?" wailed poor Dolly. "Oh, Bessie, what an awful fool I've been! And now I'm hungry and tired, and we're lost, and miles from the farm, and Miss Eleanor will be furious at me!"
"Cheer up, Dolly! We'll get home all right. And I'll see that Miss Eleanor understands all right. She won't be angry. She'll probably tell you that you've been punished enough when we get back. I don't know about getting anything to eat, though. We can't do that around here. All we want to do now is to get away from here."
Then suddenly she had an idea.
"I'm not going to steal his nasty old car," said Bessie, "but I am going to borrow something that ought to be in it, and that's a map! Anyone who travels around as much as he does must have maps that show the roads, and, as long as he has got us into this mess, I don't see why we shouldn't take something from his car to help us out of it. I'll send it back to him as soon as we get to the farm. Here—let's see—yes, here's a whole lot of little maps."
"Let me see, Bessie. I've seen those maps before. I bet I can find the right one that we want in a jiffy. Yes, here it is!"
"All right. Let's get off in the woods here and look at it, Dolly. We don't want to stay near the car, because they'll soon find that we turned up this lane, and they'll come looking for the machine and for us. So we want to be off where they can't see us. I'd hate to be caught again right now after taking such a chance with that automobile!"
"But you didn't act as if you were taking a chance, Bessie. I thought you were the bravest girl I'd ever seen—"
"Nonsense, Dolly! I was just as frightened as you were—more frightened, I guess. I didn't know whether what I was doing was right or not, and I was afraid every second I'd push the wrong thing, or touch something with my foot, and start it going as fast as it could."
"Well, when I'm frightened, I show it, and I don't do things that I'm afraid of. Someone told me once that to do something you were really afraid to do was really the bravest thing—braver than if you're not afraid when other people would be."
"Well, I was afraid, and the only reason I started that car was because I was more afraid to stay there than to run the car, Dolly. So I guess we needn't worry much about my having been brave. It was simply a question of which I was the most afraid of—the car or Mr. Holmes. Here, this is a nice spot. We can sit down on this old log, and there's enough sunlight coming down through the trees for us to see the map."