“I’ll see. You stay here a minute—”
She caught his hand. “Billy! If you leave me I’ll scream; and if I do that I’ll faint, I know I will. There may be wild cats!”
Billy laid an impressive hand on her arm. “Kid, there are no wild animals about here. We’re just as safe here as anywhere. And whatever comes, we’ve got to buck up and take it, haven’t we?”
“Ye-es, I suppose so. Oh, I’ll try to be game if—if only you won’t leave me, Billy.”
“All right. It’s partnership, then. Come on.”
They went to the wharf and skirted the lake up and down a few steps, but found nothing.
“Perhaps that path we took leads to some house,” Erminie suggested.
They climbed the hill to the pavilions again, and followed the path; but it ended in the little clearing where they had sat a few minutes before—hours it seemed to Billy.
“Possibly there’s some other trail leading off from the park; let’s investigate.”
They went back, and slowly, and with many scratches from blackberry vines, Billy leading, they felt their way around it, diving into the dense thickets at each promising bit of openness, only to be met after a few steps with close-woven vines, breast-high ferns braided like a net, or fallen logs covered with briers.