As soon as Mr Papingay had gone, Jack and Molly stopped and looked around them. They were in the open country once more, but a more hilly country than that on the other side of the wood, for they had passed right through the wood and come out at the opposite end.
The wood led straight out into a field, across which a narrow footpath straggled to a stile set in the middle of green hedges. On the other side of the stile was a path, and a little white wooden bridge across the river, and on the farther side of the river were hills and the farm-house. The red roofs and whitewashed walls of several cottages and other farm-houses could be seen here and there.
Evening was closing in rapidly, and while they had been in the wood dark clouds had drifted up and were now gathering threateningly overhead.
“It’s too dark to do any more searching to-night,” said Jack. “I suppose we’d better make straight for the farm; and come back and search all round here in the morning.”
“I suppose that would be best,” said Molly. “I don’t feel at all satisfied about the Orange Wood, do you, Jack? I think we must come back and search that too—to-morrow. It doesn’t look a very big wood.”
As the children turned to look back at the wood, the first spots of rain began to come down, so they hastened along the path toward the stile.
“I wonder if Mr Papingay really has searched it thoroughly,” said Molly. “He seems such a funny old man—I don’t know what to think.”
“I do,” laughed Jack. “Mr Papingay’s much too slap-dash to search it carefully. No, Moll, I’m afraid we’ve got to do it to-morrow. It won’t be so bad in daylight. My word! How the rain is coming down. We’re in for a storm, I should think.”
They hurried on, climbed the stile, but when they got on to the bridge Molly stopped for a moment.
“I say, Jack,” she called, and Jack stopped too. “I’m going to throw this plant-pot in the river—it’s too heavy to take all the way with us, and I don’t like to put it down in the field in case Mr Papingay comes along and finds it.” She pulled the leaf out of the pot, folded it up, and pushed it into her satchel, then threw the pot into the swiftly flowing river.