"I can't be far from the Dell, that's one thing certain. I'll coo-ee."
She coo-eed her best and shrillest, but no answer came. There was no sound but the occasional scamper of some small furry animal or the unhomely call of an Australian parrot or magpie. All around her the monotonous grey trunks stood, as much alike as the pillars of a town-hall, and overhead the blue-green leaves stirred languidly in the warm wind. Mollie was standing, though she did not know it, on primeval forest land.
What she did begin to realize was that she was lost.
"I can't be far away," she repeated to herself. "I wasn't running for five minutes. The point is, how am I to find the way back. Everything is so difficult in this upside-down place; I haven't the least idea which is north and which is south; nor which way the wind blows, nor how the shadows fall, nor anything; and if I go the wrong way I will only get farther and farther from the Dell. The best plan really is to sit down and wait till someone comes. Someone is sure to look for me sooner or later; Dick and Jerry will, anyhow." She looked about her again in search of inspiration. Sitting down and waiting was not a cheerful prospect. Dick and Jerry might whisk away home and leave her behind. Or she might merely wake up suddenly and find herself in the Chauncery morning-room, safe but dull, or—just supposing she didn't! Supposing that she couldn't get back without Prue, and that she turned into an interesting case for the What's-its-name Society, to be read about in learned books!
"I might try climbing a tree," she thought, gazing round in search of something climbable. But the tall, smooth trunks were discouraging; there were few with boughs within her reach, and the few there were were too low to be of any use as observation posts. She sat down and resolutely opened her book. "Never say die till you are dead," she repeated, firmly fastening the Guide's smile on to her face. "I'll read, and coo-ee every third page."
But she no longer walked in the submarine forest; she only sat in a wood and read about other people doing it, lifting her eyes from the page every now and then, and turning her head uneasily from side to side, feeling very lonely in that great, still place!
What was that? A magpie or a human whistle? "—two-three, one-two-three, one—". Someone was whistling the air from Faust. Mollie sprang to her feet and coo-eed with all her might and main. The whistling stopped short, and there was an answering shout in a man's voice. Mollie coo-eed again.
"Hi! You'll have to come to me," the man shouted; "I can't come to you.
Tied here by the leg."
It is not an easy thing to locate a sound in the open air, and though Mollie had had some practice in the course of her Guide work, it was only after several shouts on the man's part and experiments on hers that she at last found herself standing beside Mr. John Smith, who was sitting on the ground with one bootless leg stretched out before him.
"I am glad to see you," he said to Mollie. "I have sprained my ankle rather badly, and was just wondering what to do next. There seemed to be nothing for it but to crawl all the way home, and the prospect was not pleasing."