Suddenly Tom, who had been busy talking about water turtles with Frank, noticed this, and struck out with his willow branch to bring the truant back, but it was too late; the boat had got beyond his reach, and was now floating swiftly down the middle of the stream with the current.
The ladies screamed, and the General groaned; but as neither the screams nor the groans were louder than paper is thick, they were not heard by human ears.
"The boys will surely save us," said Matilda Agnes, hopefully. "We are too valuable to lose, to say nothing of the boat."
Before long, however, Tom exclaimed: "Oh, I'm tired trudging after the thing. Come on, Frank, let's go back home, and I'll beat you a game of croquet."
"But the dolls," the other ventured to interpose. "What'll the girls say when we tell 'em what's become of them? They'll be mad, won't they?"
"Oh, I guess not, if we make up a nice story about their sailing off down to the ocean, and going to Europe and Africa, and seeing gorillas and bears, and kings and princes;" and with these words Tom gave up the pursuit, and, followed by Frank, soon disappeared in the woods.
Being thus cruelly abandoned, with not so much as a match at hand by means of which to row themselves ashore, the three paper voyagers gave up all as lost, and were beginning to bemoan their awful fate, when the General suddenly spoke out, in cheerful tones: "Perhaps somebody'll pick us up."
"Or a steam-boat may run us down," added Angelina Mary, somewhat spitefully.
"Maybe we'll land on a water-lily," murmured Matilda Agnes, with a poetical sigh.
But time passed, and none of these things happened. The little boat drifted on and on, through woods full of singing-birds, and by fields covered with waving grain, beside houses, around hills, under bridges, and over mill-dams. To be sure, when they emerged from the latter, the paper travellers were wet to the skin, but the Foam always came out right side up, and the sun soon dried them.