"Here are some more!" called Grace loudly to Madaline, waving a bunch of quickly gathered daisies and clover. "Wait a minute, and see this one."
The call was given to throw the old woman off the track, and give her the impression that nothing more than flower gathering had been their intent.
Madaline appeared glad enough to see Grace and Cleo coming toward her, for at that very moment she had decided to run.
"Can you see what—the old woman is doing?" Grace asked Cleo. "Don't look—back—directly but stop to pick up something, then you can see."
"She must be scolding," replied Cleo, "for she's wagging her head, and shaking her old brown fist. Dear me, how I hated to let her swallow up that lovely girl. Do you suppose we can ever rescue her?"
"Do I?" flaunted Grace. "I just can't wait to get at that rescuing. I guess all our scouting will have to come back to a S.O.S., for never was there a clearer case of need than this. That hateful old woman has the child hoodooed, or hypnotized, or flimflammed," she declared, giving a wide choice of active transitive verbs for Cleo to choose from.
"But isn't the girl a darling?" enthused Cleo. "I could just love her like a picture in a book. And she said she loved us! Wasn't that quaint!"
"Oh, Madaline! You missed it!" Grace charged the girl who was too timid to interview Maid Mary. "We are going to find her house. And she's just wonderful." This last was pronounced with that effusion peculiar to the modern use of the word "wonderful." Nothing could possibly be more or at least so superlative.
"Why didn't you lasso the old woman?" teased Madaline, referring to the trick Grace played on another occasion told in our first volume.
"I would have, only you were too far away to pull the rope!" fired back Grace. Nevertheless her tone implied she would not stop at rope or swing, if she found such a feat necessary in the rescue of Maid Mary.