“I’m sure of it,” said Billie, climbing into the back seat as they drew up in front of the hotel. “It’s a dangerous thing,” she said to herself as she sank down upon the cushions, “to wish for a thing unless you really want it, because if your wish comes true, you are just as apt as not to unwish it, and then things are in a muddle.”
CHAPTER XIII.—IN THE DEEP WOODS.
Billie, having unburdened her mind, felt much happier. The whole situation had come about of course by her own careless words spoken in anger, but after all she could hardly be called a responsible party to the transaction, a phrase which sounded very legal to her. She remembered once her father had playfully called her “a little accessory before the fact,” when she had induced him to take her on a foolish excursion that had ended in disaster. Certainly it all sounded very much like a romantic tale, and she did hope it would have a happy ending, but no amount of hopefulness could keep that little entering-wedge of anxiety from finding its way into her mind.
“Billie, is this the road to the left?” asked Edward Paxton, suddenly.
Billie had just time to say she thought it was the road, they had never been over it but once and then at night, when Mary and Nancy pounced upon her.
“We know the secret,” they whispered, pointing to Edward.
“You’ve guessed,” she replied, relieved that she was no longer burdened with a secret she had longed to discuss with her friends. And they did discuss it in low voices from every point of view. It was impossible to explain Edward l’Estrange’s mysterious telephone message. It did look very much as though he had taken a mean advantage, but Billie believed in him and so did the other two girls.
So absorbed were these young people in their whispered conversations, Edward and Elinor on the front seat and the others on the back, that they had not noticed that the road they had taken was rapidly degenerating from a hard beaten highway into a sandy trail.
The land about them had a lonely, uninhabited look. The stillness was oppressive. Almost imperceptibly, the few sparse palm trees and scraggy pines which stood far apart like people on the outskirts of a crowd, began to grow more closely together in little friendly groups. Then the groups joined and became companies and the companies a multitude, and the multitude a vast legion whose branches interlocked so closely as to form a roof over their heads.
It was hard pulling along the deep sandy ruts, but the Comet uttered no complaints until suddenly with a groan that was almost human, his wheels sank hub-high in the sand and he could go no more.