She picked out a few more ties, and came to another and larger culvert. "Suppose a train should come," she gasped. The strain of the past few days was having its natural revenge—reaction. Her depression had soured into hilarity. "Well, I'll run the bridge—I have always heard it is the only safe way." She looked up, far beyond the ties. She would have closed her eyes, but that strange feeling of sight-security, which does not depend upon sight, compelled her to look—but not at the ties.
Every time she planted her foot down she expected to go through, foot and all, but, somehow, she did not sink down between the ties.
"It would take a funnel to put me safely down that way," she decided. "I guess I would have to have a very big hole to drop through."
It seemed to Tavia that everything she had to do must be made easy for her, even dropping through railroad ties!
She had crossed the bridge and now she stood for a moment mocking it.
"I should burn my bridges behind me," she mused, "but it takes time and talent, even to burn bridges."
Those who knew Tavia would scarcely have recognized her now, could they have viewed her through the glass with which she was magnifying her faults. Tavia had been tried, she had tried herself, and after having had an opportunity to board any of three trains going toward camp, here she was again—stranded!
"I'm a first-class simpleton," she decided. "Dorothy was right; always right. I'm a rattle-brain; and they think I am drowned. That is more reasonable, and more charitable, than to think I could be so foolish."
"I guess I couldn't get along very well without Dorothy," she went on thinking, as she trudged forward. "She always kept me together. But at least I'll try to do her training justice now. I'll try to walk back to camp."
A narrow path ran beside the rails. This, Tavia thought had been trodden down by tramps. Beyond, there seemed nothing but woods, and it was getting dusk. Well, there must be houses or huts somewhere, and she would walk on.