Mrs. Blair turned on her daughter a face of pale misgiving.
"I knew it," she said direfully. "I felt it all along. . . . She's lost."
"Well, she'll be found," said Ruth lightly, with an indisputable lift of excitement. "The bears won't eat them."
Mrs. Blair's eyes shifted uneasily to meet the advancing circle from the fire.
"There are worse bites than bears'," she found time to throw out, before she had to voice the best possible version of Maria Angelina's disappearance.
Instantly a babble of facile comfort rose.
They would be here any moment now.
Some one had picked them up—they were safe and sound, this instant.
There wasn't a thing that could happen—it wasn't as though these were wilds.
Just telephone about—she mustn't worry. As soon as it was light some one would go out and track them.