“Don’t you have anyone?” asked Judy with quick sympathy.
“I have the orphans. I’m an orphan myself,” she confided, “so I guess I really feel for them. Once I thought I would marry and have a family of my own. We were going to live in a big house on the other side of the hill. This road takes me right past it.” She sighed. “The windows are boarded up now, and the yard is overgrown with weeds.”
“Do we pass it?” asked Holly.
“No,” she replied. “It’s beyond the beaver dam. This road joins another road that crosses the state line into New York.”
“That isn’t the road we took in our Beetle, is it?” questioned Judy.
“No, it crosses that, too. The orphanage is down in the valley near the crossroads. I hope you do visit us some time.”
“We will,” Judy and Holly promised.
The green car hurtled over more bumps in the little-used road and then stopped. They must be near the beaver dam. To their left, down a slope thick with ferns, Judy could hear water running.
“Well, here we are.” Meta opened the door on her side of the car. “I’ll walk a little way with you,” she offered. “Otherwise you may lose time looking for the pond. It’s near the head of this stream.”
“Does the stream have a name?” Judy asked as she and Holly stepped out on the needle-covered ground. Overhead were dark fir trees that made the woods seem lonely and full of whispers as the wind moaned through their branches.