CHAPTER XVIII.COMING HOME.
“I don’t know how the rest of you feel, but I’m getting about starved,” announced Phil, after they had gone some little distance further. “I vote we have our grub just as soon as we get to the berry-pasture, before we pick any berries.”
This proposal was heartily approved of by the entire party.
“It must be nearly noon, I think,” said Eunice. “We wasted a lot of time by the brook, you know, and we’ve been walking forhourssince.”
“Hark! there’s the twelve o’clock whistle now,” exclaimed Phil. The children listened eagerly. It certainly was the distant mill-whistle, but it was not the noon signal, but, instead, the one for seven o’clock in the morning.
“No wonder we are hungry, then,” said Harry. “We all had our breakfasts at five, and that’s six hours ago.”
“And we’re nowhere near the berry-pastureyet,” said Rose, hesitating and looking around. “We ought to have been out of the woods long ago. Phil Howard, Iknowwe took the wrong turn there by that old oak.”
The other children looked at one another in despair.
“Bet you we did!” cried Ray. “I kinder thought this didn’t look right. Now we’ve got to go back.”
“Don’t let’s,” said Harry. “If we take this path off this way, it will bring us back on to the road, I know.”
“AndIsay, don’t let’s go another step till we’ve had our grub.”
Phil gave his advice decidedly, “We can’t get to the pasture, anyway, till afternoon, and we might as well have our lunch first.”
“There’s the brook again,” exclaimed Cricket, catching sight of her old friend, the winding Kayuna, which meandered in every known direction.
“We can get some water there. I guess I’ll put on my waist now. It’s ’bout dry,” she added, as the mention of the brook brought her mishap to her mind.
A pretty little grassy opening just thereafforded them a fine place to sit down for their lunch. Cricket took her pail and went up the brook after water, and presently returned, arrayed again in her pink cambric waist, which was very wrinkled and streaky as to the sleeves, and very damp and sticky as to the collar.
They spread their luncheon, a very generous one, since it had been provided, as they had begged, with a view to its serving two meals. But the boys seemed to be entirely hollow.
“See here, boys,” exclaimed Edith, in dismay. “You must stop. There won’t be bread and butter enough for supper, if you keep on, and we must make it last. Now, Phil, you’ve had five pieces of cake already. You shan’t have another bit. We’ll pack the rest up now.” Edith being the eldest of the party, and unusually quiet and dignified for her age, her words always carried weight. The boys reluctantly suspended operations, and very unwillingly watched the remainder of the lunch repacked in the baskets.
They finally decided not to go back the way they had come, but to take a cart-path which crossed the one they were on, and which Harry was quite sure would bring them out on the main road that they wished to strike.
Their lunch had refreshed them, and they went on, gayly chattering and laughing. A squirrel-hunt detained them awhile, and then a great patch of squaw-berries, as the children called the pretty partridge-vine, attracted them. Then they stumbled on some wintergreen, and stopped to gather great bunches.
“Goodness gracious!” exclaimed Cricket, at last. “Boys, I believe it’s most supper-time, and I’d like to know where that West Road’s gone to.”
“It’s gone to Melville. That’s where it always goes,” said Harry, smartly.
“Since your wits are so sharp,” laughed Edith, “perhaps they’ll help you to decide which of these two paths we ought to take now.”
Harry considered.
“We want to go west,” he said, “and there’s the sun over there, so we’ll take that path. Jove, boys! Look at that sun! it must be four o’clock. No berries yet.”
The little band began to look rather discouraged.
“We’re like Columbus discovering America,” observed Cricket, cheerfully. “The farther we go, the more it isn’t there. Let’s keep straighton. Papa says that the woods aren’t but two miles across, so we will certainly get out that way.”
“If once we strike that West Road,” said Harry, “I know where to go then.”
“Here are some blackberries!” cried Ray, who was in advance.
They had come to another open spot, and sure enough, there were some straggling blackberry vines.
“Let’s pick these, anyway,” said Edna, “in case we don’t find any more.”
The children hooted at this idea, but nevertheless, they fell to work. The berries were hard and dry and half-ripe, but they were—or ought to have been—blackberries. Their fingers flew, and the hard little berries rolled into their tin pails with a lively clatter.
“Ow! ow! ow!” suddenly came in squeals of terror from one of the girls. “Here’s a snake! a big black snake, and he is eating a little bird!”
The children rushed to the spot. There, among some tall weeds, lay a long, slender, whip-like object, black and shining, with raised head. In its open mouth was a poor little,struggling, half-fledged bird, already partially swallowed. Above it, the parent birds fluttered and screamed in agony, sweeping around in short, swift circles.
The children stood, at first, in fascinated horror. The poor little birdie slowly disappeared in the yawning mouth, and the children could see the muscles of the black body work, as the whole undigested mass slipped slowly down. Then the snake made queer, darting movements with its head, and this broke the spell for the frightened children. A wild stampede instantly followed, as they fled, screaming and shrieking. The few berries, the rest of the lunch, the napkins and the pail-covers flew in every direction, as the children sped wildly on, thinking that the snake was in full pursuit. Nor did they stop until Cricket, who, on her swift feet, led the band, went, head over heels, over a projecting root, and found herself sitting on the bank of the ever-present Kayuna.
Then they all brought up, panting and breathless, and rather shamefaced.
“Ho! what made you girls run so?” asked Phil, recovering himself first.
“Well, I like that! what made you run soyourself, Mr. Phil? I guess you were as frightened as anybody,” said Daisy, indignantly.
“’Fraid? I wasn’t a bit afraid. I just ran after you girls to tell you there wasn’t any danger, but you ran so fast, and I was tired—”
“Oh, tired!” chorused the girls, scornfully. “Seems to us you managed to keep pretty well ahead.”
“Jove, boys, where do you think we are?” exclaimed Phil, abruptly changing the subject.
“We’re just exactly where Cricket fell in the brook this morning.”
And so they were. Thinking it was afternoon they had turned in the direction of the sun, meaning to go west. Of course they had really gone east, since it was still morning, and here they were, not ten minutes’ walk from home.
They stood looking at one another in perfect silence.
“Our whole day wasted,” said Eunice, at length, very soberly.
“It must be most supper-time, and we haven’t any lunch left,” commented Harry, surveying the melancholy collection of empty pails and baskets.
“I’m awful hungry,” sighed Phil.
No one exactly liked to propose going home, yet what else was there to do? It was too late, they thought, to start out again in search of pastures new, and yet, how could they go home and encounter the teasing that would surely follow the tale of the day’s experience.
“If only we hadsomeberries!” groaned Rose.
“That horrid old snake,” said Daisy, looking fearfully around. “We would have had some, anyway, excepting for his chasing us away.”
Cricket had been sitting still, where she had tumbled. Now she got up slowly and picked up her pail and basket.
“I’m going home,” she said, decidedly. “I think we’ve had a very nice day, if we didn’t get any blackberries. Papa always buys them, anyway, of that poor little girl that brings them down from the hills, and she needs the money.”
“If Cricket goes,” said Edna, jumping up with great alacrity, “of course we must all go with her. It must be most supper-time, anyway.”
The depressed looking group presently found themselves at the edge of the woods.
“Well, I do declare!” exclaimed Cricket, stopping short, “if there aren’t Thomas and theoxen at the bars! Papa has sent him, after all. Hollo, Thomas, did you come to meet us?”
Thomas stared as they approached.
“Wal, now, young uns, I railly thought you were off for all day. What’s drove you home at this time o’ the mornin’? Gin out arly, seems to me.”
“Why, no,” answered Cricket, surprised. “It’s the time we meant to come. Did papa send you for us?”
“Wal, no, not ’xactly. What should yer pa send for you now, fur? He kinder thought you wuz a-goin’ to stay all day.”
“I should think we had stayed all day,” said Harry. “Seems a week since this morning.”
“Wal, I rather ’low it’s mornin’ yet,” returned Thomas, equally surprised.
“Morningnow?” came a chorus of voices. “Why, we’ve had our dinner, and we would have had our supper, only we lost it.”
Thomas went off in a loud guffaw.
“Ef you blessed young uns hain’t ben and come home at ten o’clock in the mornin’!”
“Ten!” faltered a voice or two. The rest were speechless.
“To be sure. Thar comes Mr. Archie now.He’s ben a drivin’ the doctor over to the nine-thirty train.”
Archie reined up at the sight of the group around the bars.
“Hello, you fellows!” he called. “Thought you were off for all day. Get your pails filled so soon? What! no berries!”
The children glanced shamefacedly at each other.
“Cricket fell in the brook,” began one.
“And we lost our way,” said another.
“And we ate our dinner, and lost our supper,” said a third.
“And we saw a big, black snake chewing up a little bird—”
“And we were all afraid and ran,” confessed Cricket.
“Not afraid!” cried Phil, valiantly. “The girls ran, Arch, and we fellows had to run after them to tell them there wasn’t any danger. But we lost all our supper, running,” he added hastily, to prevent contradiction to his first statement.
“And then—well,” finished Eunice, in a burst of honesty, “we thought it was supper-time, Archie; we really did, and Thomas says it’s only ten o’clock in the morning!”
Archie shouted at this.
“So you never found the berry-pasture at all? Haven’t you got a single berry among you all? Well, by Jove, you are a fine set! Thought it was supper-time at ten in the morning!”
The children never heard the end of this joke.