“Nell!” said Johnny, suddenly; “I believe we are lost! How to find our way back again over these long paths we have been walking through all the afternoon, I am sure I do not know.”
“And I am so tired now, I can hardly stir,” said Nelly, in a complaining tone; “and night is near, as I told you before.”
Johnny looked around without answering. He saw that there was no help for it; they must return the way they came, long as it was, or stay in the woods all night.
“Come, Nelly,” he said, “we must go back on the same path, if we can.”
It was getting quite dusky. They took each other by the hand and trudged along. One by one the flowers dropped from Nelly’s full apron, to the ground, and at length her weary fingers unclasped, and the apron itself resumed its proper position. Everybody knows how easy it is to lose one’s way, and what a difficult thing it is to find it again. Our wanderers discovered it to be so. They got upon a wrong path that led them into soft, wet ground, where, the first thing they knew, they were up to their ankles in mud; and when they had extricated themselves as well as they could, and struck out boldly for home, confident that they were now making a direct short-cut for it, they found themselves, in a little while, on the same path, at the foot of the same large rock where they were before.
This was a little too much for the patience of the two picnickers. Johnny looked at Nell gravely.
“Don’t!” he said, “don’t, Nelly dear!”
"Don’t what?" asked Nelly, dropping down where she stood, so completely exhausted as to be glad of a moment’s rest.
“Don’t cry. You look just like it. All girls cry, you know.”
