“Stay close to me, Connie,” Veve shivered. “I’m afraid.”
“I don’t feel so brave myself,” answered Connie.
“Do you think we ever will get out of here?” Veve asked in a quavering voice. She stared at the canvas bundles and boxes stacked in the car. They looked as if they might be alive, though she knew they weren’t.
“Of course we’ll get out,” replied Connie staunchly.
“But when?”
“I don’t know when,” admitted Connie. “But they will have to open up this car sometime. Probably at the next stop.”
Clinging together and bracing themselves against the side of the car, the girls tried not to think about Miss Gordon and the Brownie camp. But they couldn’t help worrying. What would the troop leader do when they failed to meet her at the car? Would she ever guess that they had been taken away on the circus train?
And the good times they would miss at camp! Even now, the other Brownies probably were enjoying a swim at the beach.
“We never should have crawled into this hateful old box car,” Connie said, raising her voice above the rattle and bang of the rolling wheels. “Miss Gordon’s told us a thousand times that Brownies THINK before they act. We didn’t at all, Veve.”
“It was a mistake to get into the car,” Veve admitted. “But the engine wasn’t hooked on. How did we know a man would come along and slam the door shut?”