Elizabeth Ann could have cried, but she didn’t. She was so tired and worried and it began to look as though they wouldn’t get to school that day at all. But Roger was sorry enough, without seeing her cry, she thought, so she just winked her eyes a little and then said bravely:
“What’ll we do next, Roger?”
“We’ll have to go back,” said Roger slowly. “All the way back to the main road; because I’m afraid to go any further over this road. I don’t know where it leads—and it may go on for miles and miles, without passing a house.”
They turned around and went back. It seemed three times as long a journey as when they had first walked it, but the wind was no longer in their faces and that was better. But when they reached the main road, Elizabeth Ann was sure she couldn’t walk another step.
“I’m awfully sorry, Elizabeth Ann,” said Roger, looking at her anxiously. “Don’t sit down in the snow—you can’t rest now; it’s only a little further to school. You can’t sit down in wet snow, Elizabeth Ann.”
But Elizabeth Ann didn’t care where she sat. Not only was she tired, but she was sleepy. She stumbled when she walked, and she didn’t see any reason why Roger should expect to keep her walking and walking, when she was so tired.
“You go on without me,” she told him, “I’ll come after a while.”
But Roger had heard an automobile and he looked hopefully down the road.
“Here comes a car!” he cried. “I’ll ask them to take us to school. Don’t you dare sit down in the wet cold snow, Elizabeth Ann Loring!”
Roger was so eager to get someone to take Elizabeth Ann to school, before she went to sleep where she was, that he paid no attention to the car. It is doubtful whether he would have recognized it, anyway, for it was well covered with snow. But Elizabeth Ann, sleepy as she was, recognized whose voice it was that answered Roger’s eager shout and she knew both the men whose heads were thrust out of the car windows when it stopped.