"What can she be driving at?" asked Amy.
"There must be some explanation," said Betty, as she got up from the
stump on which she had been sitting, and placed the child on the ground.
"We'll take her a little distance on the way we are going," she went on.
"Perhaps we may meet someone looking for her."
"And we can't delay too long," added Mollie. "It will soon be supper time, and my aunt, where we are going to stay to-night, is quite a fusser. I sent her a card, saying we'd be there, and if we don't arrive she may call up our houses on the telephone, and imagine that all sorts of accidents have befallen us."
"But we can't leave her all alone on the road," spoke Betty, indicating the child.
"Don't 'eeve me!" pleaded the lost tot. "Me want one of my muvvers!"
"It's getting worse and worse," sighed Mollie, wanting to laugh, but not daring to.
Slowly the girls proceeded in the direction they had been going. They hoped they might meet someone who either would be looking for the child, or else a traveler who could direct them properly to her house, or who might even assume charge of the little one. For it was getting late and the girls did not feel like spending the night in some strange place. It was practically out of the question.
They were going along, Betty holding one of the child's hands, the other small fist tightly clutching some sticky chocolates, when a turn of the road brought the outdoor girls in sight of a lad who was seated on a roadside rock, tying a couple of rags around his left foot, which was bleeding.
Beside the boy, on the ground, was a pack such as country peddlers often carry. The lad seemed in pain, for as the girls approached, their footfalls deadened by the soft dust of the road, they heard him murmur:
"Ouch! That sure does hurt! It's a bad cut, all right, and I don't see, Jimmie Martin, how you're going to do much walking! Why couldn't you look where you were going, and not step on that piece of glass?"