Meanwhile the little boys had been informing the family of the object of their visit, and while Mr. and Mrs. Peterkin were looking up and down the road, and Agamemnon and Solomon John were explaining to each other the details of their journeys, they had discovered some facts.
“We shall have to go back,” they exclaimed. “We are too late! The maple-syrup was all made last spring.”
“We are too early; we shall have to stay two or three months,—the cider is not made till October.”
The expedition was a failure! They could study the making of neither maple-syrup nor cider, and Elizabeth Eliza was lost, perhaps forever! The sun went down, and Mr. and Mrs. Peterkin still stood to look up and down the road.
... Elizabeth Eliza meanwhile, had sat upon her trunk, as it seemed for ages. She recalled all the terrible stories of prisoners,—how they had watched the growth of flowers through cracks in the pavement. She wondered how long she could live without eating. How thankful she was for her abundant breakfast!
At length she heard the door-bell. But who could go to the door to answer it? In vain did she make another effort to escape; it was impossible!
How singular!—there were footsteps. Some one was going to the door; some one had opened it. “They must be burglars.” Well, perhaps that was a better fate—to be gagged by burglars, and the neighbors informed—than to be forever locked on her trunk. The steps approached the door. It opened, and Amanda ushered in the expressman.
Amanda had not gone. She had gathered, while waiting at the breakfast-table, that there was to be an expressman whom she must receive.
Elizabeth Eliza explained the situation. The expressman turned the key of her trunk, and she was released!
What should she do next? So long a time had elapsed, she had given up all hope of her family returning for her. But how could she reach them?