After dinner the girls carefully cleaned up, anxious that the little old lady’s party should not be spoiled by any hard work on her part. And then, as the twilight shadows were beginning to fall, they knew it would be necessary to hurry if they were to reach camp before dark.
“And we’re none too sure of the way, either,” Mollie said to the Little Captain in an undertone. “There’s no time to waste.”
But when they explained this to the old lady, she seemed so disappointed and frail and little that they had hard work to get away at all.
“We’ll come back to-morrow or next day,” Betty promised, as they stepped out into the open, the old lady following them hospitably to the door. “We’ve just had a lovely time.”
At the edge of the woods they turned and looked back.
The Old Maid of the Mountains was waving her hand.
CHAPTER XIX
THE STORM
So interested were the girls in the little old lady and so fond had they grown of her that they found it hard to keep away from the little cabin where she lived.
They kept her supplied with canned goods of all sorts, to say nothing of milk and fresh eggs, until the old lady lost her frail and wasted look and even seemed less feeble.