“Bet you’re getting tired,” he said. “I’ll tell you what, Elizabeth Ann; we’ll sit down on this log and eat our lunches. That will give us a little rest. We’re late now—I’m sure of it—and fifteen minutes won’t make any difference.”
He brushed the snow off a large log at the side of the road and Elizabeth Ann sat down. She was warm enough, but she was very tired. She opened her lunch box and held it out to Roger.
“No thanks,” he said gruffly, “I have my own.”
He took two apples out of the paper bag he had carried in his pocket.
“You have to eat some of mine,” Elizabeth Ann insisted. “Aunt Grace always puts up some for me to pass to the other girls. She gives Doris extra sandwiches, too. These are minced chicken, Roger.”
“Will you eat one of my apples then?” demanded Roger, looking at the sandwiches hungrily.
Elizabeth Ann promised and they began to eat as though breakfast had been “the day before,” Roger said. But the long walk had made them hungry, and when the sandwiches and stuffed eggs, and even Roger’s apples had disappeared, they both felt much better.
“If it would stop snowing, we could go faster,” said Roger, as they started to walk again. “It can’t be much further, Elizabeth Ann.”
But it was. They walked another two miles and then Roger was forced to admit that he did not know where they were.
“I said you made a monkey out of yourself, waiting for Catherine,” he declared ruefully, “but I’m a worse monkey; here we are, goodness only knows how many miles from school—and it must be noon. I haven’t a watch, but it feels like noon to me.”