“Rosalind has come out of the Forest of Arden,” he said.
All eyes were turned on Nancy who shrank into the shadow. Suddenly Percy seized one of the tall candlesticks and held it over her head.
“Why, Nancy-Bell,” he cried, “what has happened to your——”
Nancy spread her hands over her lap and turned her large blue eyes to them with a piteous expression.
“I took it off and threw it away in the swamp,” she said tremulously. “I did hate the thing so, and it was full of hornets and not big enough to take a decent step in anyhow. I hoped no one would notice.”
They were tired, but not too tired to laugh.
“If I had been dying, I should have died laughing,” Billie often afterwards remarked in telling of this incident.
Nancy, minus her narrow velveteen skirt, was really a beguiling figure in blue pongee knickerbockers. The straight velveteen jacket reached just below her waist, and with her rumpled curls and weary expression she might easily have been taken for Rosalind, just arrived at the Forest of Arden with Celia and Touchstone.
But the wonder of it was how a half-crazed mountaineer could know anything about the greatest comedy in the world. This did not trouble them until afterwards, however.
“Billie,” observed Ben presently, “I’ve been consulting with—with this young lady here. She knows the trail through the swamp and has consented to guide me back to the camp to-night. We may be able to make it in less than two hours by a short cut, she says, and we ought to start at once. Miss Campbell will be half wild with uneasiness. As soon as it’s daylight, I’ll come back by the road in the ‘Comet.’ There are some bearskins and blankets. You can all put up here for the night. Percy will stay of course.”