CHAPTER IX
THE HERB WITCH
Miles are always longer when you travel them than when you talk of them. For this reason, as well as for the fact that Anne had miscalculated the distance, the up-grade road to Pine Ridge seemed endless.
When they had travelled less than half the way, Anne’s cyclometer said two miles, and Miss Letty’s wheel began to bump and act badly. She stopped to find the cause, thinking that the front tire needed blowing up; but to her dismay she found that it was hopelessly punctured by a bent horse-shoe nail!
Anne tried to mend it with some plaster from her tool kit; but it was old, dry, and would not stick. If they turned back, the road home would be even longer than to keep on; so, after a long consultation, held under a sign-post that offered no consolation, as the bridge on the cross-road to which it pointed was known to be up, they agreed that there was nothing to be done but to keep on and lead the wheel, Elsa Willoughby and Anne offering to walk to hear Miss Letty company; the others to ride ahead and explain the delay.
“Such a stupid accident!” said Miss Letty, who felt very badly at upsetting the plan of a swift downhill ride home, even though she was in no way to blame.
“I’ll tell you what we can do,” said Anne, brightening up, as the party was about to divide. “Instead of going up around the Ridge to the turnpike, we can cut straight across the fields. There is a little blacksmith’s shop at the mill corner where they do all sorts of tinkering for the farmers that go by to town, and I’m positive I’ve seen a sign ‘Bicycles repaired’ on the tree. There are bars that we can let down in crossing lots and that dead tree back on the hilltop will do for a guide-post, for I saw it from the other side this morning as we came up. Then it stood about halfway between the roads.”
This seemed the most sensible thing to do; and though of course the country was strange both to Miss Letty and the Willoughbys, they had entire confidence in Anne. So the bars were dropped, and the party trooped through and crossed the field diagonally, keeping the dead tree on the hilltop well in front of them.
“I don’t see any bars in that fence yonder, but it’s old and tumble-down, and we can easily lift the wheels over,” said Anne, who was beginning to feel the responsibility of what she had undertaken.
When they reached the fence, however, a new difficulty presented itself—the old rails and posts were meshed in and out with barbed wire, rusty, and formidable as the quills of an angry porcupine.