"Very well," said Clarence. "We can argue as we walk."
The problem of making sixteen young women willing to be a chorus and of finding sixteen or twenty young men to be anything, took them quite a while to discuss. They walked on as they talked, until it began to get darker.
"By the way, have you any idea where we are?" inquired Clarence, stopping short to look about him. "New England woods are not my native habitat."
"Nor mine," said Joy, startled. "I think we ought to go back to the high road."
"If there's any left to go back to," suggested Clarence. "We've been on one way-path after another so long that I don't think I could find it again."
They turned around, and continued to follow way-paths back. Clarence had no pocket compass, such as people who get lost ought to possess. And it was getting relentlessly darker and darker. Joy had never been lost before, and she was surprised to find the feeling of panic that possessed her when she grasped the fact that neither of them knew where they were. Finally they gained a clear space where there was a tolerably traveled-looking road.
"If we wait here somebody may come along," said Clarence. "Jove, I'm hungry!"
"So am I," said Joy.
But there wasn't anything to do about that. Finally Joy remembered that she had some chocolate in her little handbag, and they divided it and ate it. After that life was a little brighter.
"Do you suppose we'll have to stay here all night?" demanded Joy. "We'll freeze to death if we do."