It wasn’t far to Cosmo Woods but it was hard to get there. After leaving the lovely ocean boulevard they took a strip of road that wound around the lake. Then, they went out on a back road that cut through a farming district. There were even some hills, uncommon for ocean territory, and when their car would reach the top of one of these there wouldn’t be a mark of any kind to distinguish the end of the hill from the beginning. Such a sameness, so little variety, a few scattered houses! Assuredly the sea-shore is lovely—just at the sea’s shore. But not inland.
“Let’s see that chart,” the doctor asked Barbara when Cara turned away from the main road onto what might charitably be called a lane. “I expect I’ll need a mariner’s compass, but let’s take a look at it anyhow.”
Babs handed over the penciled paper.
“Yes, I guess this is right,” the doctor announced, after a brief survey. “But we’ll probably soon have to get out and walk.”
“Yes, we walk from the scrub pines,” Babs said. “And see! There they are! They’re the only pines around. These trees are everything else, but not pines. Why don’t they call them Scrubbys?”
So presently the car had been parked in a little clearance, safely locked, and the three scouts went on.
“If we see a camp,” said Cara, after they had decided that one way was a path newly trodden and the other wasn’t, “perhaps Babs had better go ahead and you and I, doctor, will sort of hang behind. They may still be so afraid they might take to the trees.”
“Fine idea,” assented Dr. Hale, who loved the woods so thoroughly that he seemed to care as much about a clump of ferns as about finding the elusive Marcusis.
Through a little tunnel of wild-grape vines they managed to pass, while the doctor led and brushed the most impertinent brambles and vines out of the girls’ way.
Then Babs grasped Cara’s arm.