"You see, the skirt's quite broad," interrupted Nancy, antic.i.p.ating objections and endeavoring to spread the skirt to the full limit of its yard and a quarter.

"Just about as broad as one trouser leg," teased Ben.

Nancy ignored the remark, and the pheasant's feather in her hat seemed to quiver with indignation.

"Where's the crook?" asked Mary politely.

"I'm her crook," put in Percy. "You'll find she'll be using me as a staff presently when she has to take a step six inches instead of five."

"We'll be carrying her yet," Ben predicted.

"I think you are all perfectly horrid," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Nancy, who indeed looked as pretty as a picture in the blue velveteen. There was the coral tie at her throat, as she had planned, and perched on her curls was the jauntiest little hat imaginable that served only to keep the sun off the top of her head and was no protection whatever to her tip-tilted freckled nose. Mary and Elinor wore jimmies bought in the village, and Billie wore no hat at all.

"No, we aren't, Nancy dear. We're just teasing," said Billie. "You look sweet, but why have you never worn it before?"

"To tell the truth, I was afraid of the scorn of Mr. Lupo," said Nancy.

"All of you are just like a family, so it didn't matter, but Mr. Lupo might have thought me, well--an amateur. I've been dying to wear it,"

she added, giving a dance step and looking down with pride at the snug-fitting skirt. "Of course, I know the skirt is a bit narrow. You know how Mrs. Moxley is,--just determined to have her own way. It was all I could do to get her to put the extra quarter of a yard in the skirt. But I think I can manage it if we don't walk too fast. There is so much level ground on this walk, too,--all that table land, you know."

Ben gave a covert smile and the others laughed openly.

"You funny child," said Billie. "It's really beautiful to see a person enjoy clothes like that. You look sweet enough to charm a snake, and if the walking is too stiff, we'll just carry you."

"So far so good," said Ben, "but on the other side of Table Top there'll be some climb."

Nancy did not hear this prediction.

So far, indeed, the trail was a broad and honest path leading through the pine forest; but after a while, as it descended toward the tableland, it grew so narrow as to be imperceptible to everybody but Ben, whose eyes, trained by long months of camping and vacation walking trips, could pick out the faintest indication of a path where the others saw nothing at all.

It was well past noon when at last they arrived at a scooped out area of land between the two mountains, connecting them half way to their summit, like the web foot of a duck.

Here, hungry and tired, they paused for lunch, and somehow, two sandwiches and a boiled egg apiece didn't seem to go very far.

"I have to apologize," said Billie. "There was nothing in the camp to eat. I suppose that's why Mr. Lupo made his mysterious visit to the village: to get supplies."

"I'm thankful it's all gone and there is no more," announced Percy.

"It's something less to carry," he added, tying a cord around Nancy's coat and his own and hanging them over his back like a peddler's pack.

"Be still," whispered Elinor, raising a warning hand, "I was certain I heard music off in that direction."

The six friends sat silently listening for strains of music. In the stillness of the forest they heard nothing but the songs of the birds, broken occasionally by the caw of a crow or the tapping of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r.

But it was good to stop chattering for a while in this peaceful place, and Billie, lying on her back looking up into the interlacing branches of the trees, smiled happily.

How could she have been out of humor when just at their very doorstep lay the most wonderful enchanted forest? It would not be easy to recall silly domestic troubles in the midst of all this beauty.

"Curious. I was certain I heard the sound of some instrument like a mandolin or a zither," said Elinor. "It was just one strain, almost as if the wind had blown over an aeolian harp."

"It was fairy music," put in Mary.

"Like enough," said Ben; "and we had better be moving on," he added, rising and leading the way. "The fairies don't like human ears to hear their music and they might be playing tricks on us. Then we'd be in the deuce of a fix out in the wilderness."

"They don't mind at all," said Mary. "You're entirely mistaken, Ben. You are thinking of elves. The fairies are kind little people who never harm anyone."

They had been walking for some time when they heard cries behind them.

"Help! Help!" screamed the voice of Nancy from around a curve in the trail.

"What did I tell you," said Ben, running back with the others to see what had happened, and then bursting into a perfect roar of laughter.

There was Percy in the act of killing a long black snake, which was curled up with head thrust out in an att.i.tude of defence, and there was Nancy, who had evidently started to run and, missing the trail, had rushed into a tall clump of bramble bushes. The brambles had wrapped themselves about her like the tentacles of an octopus, and the jaunty feather was caught in an overhanging branch.

"Don't kill the snake, Percy," objected Ben. "There are lots more just like him, and it won't help any to kill one. Besides, they never start a quarrel."

"All right, old S. P. C. A.," said Percy, as relieved as the snake, which immediately glided off into the bushes as if it had actually understood that Ben was making a plea for its life.

With subdued giggles they released Nancy from the clutches of the brambles. The feather was broken in half and dragged dejectedly over the crown of her hat, and there was a long scratch across her left cheek.

"Do you remember Jim Phipps in the Fourth Grade, Ben," began Percy, pointing to Nancy's hat. "Do you remember the poem called 'Absalom' he recited? That is, he began it but he never got any farther than the first line, because he started out by saying, 'Abalsom, my son Abalsom.'"

The laugh was against Nancy, but she took it good-naturedly and joined in, while she broke the feather in half and left the lower end standing up in the band in a straight c.o.c.kade.

And now the path, although it was on level ground, seemed to grow more and more difficult. Ben, glancing behind him, doubtfully remarked:

"As long as there are only two miles of this, I suppose we can stand it, but if any person feels tired, sing out and we'll start back without trying to make Indian Head."

"We are all right," they a.s.sured him.

For a long time they walked on in silence. The ground was soft and squashy under foot, and Billie privately believed that the trail lay only in Ben's imagination.

"Ben," she said at last. "I think maybe we had better start back. We don't seem to be getting anywhere, and this ground is like a sponge."

Silently they turned their faces in the other direction, feeling all at once chilled and tired and hungry. Ben, leading the way with Billie, began to look serious.

"Billie," he said in a low voice after a while, "I am afraid I am not worthy the confidence Miss Campbell has placed in me. I am afraid I'll have to confess that we are lost."

CHAPTER V.

IN THE BOG.

It was not an unique experience to Billie to be lost. She had once known what it was to be out of sight of every human habitation on a Western plain, and furthermore half dead with hunger and thirst. You will recall how the "Comet" once carried the Motor Maids safely over an old wagon trail through a tropical forest in Florida, and perhaps also you have not forgotten how Billie and Mary Price were lost in the sacred groves of Nikko in j.a.pan. Therefore, Billie was not in the least frightened when Ben confided to her private ear that he had missed the trail.

"We can't be very much lost," she answered. "'Table Top' is only two miles broad, and we'll have to reach one side or the other pretty soon."

"I hope so," said Ben, "but don't tell the others yet. If they lose confidence in me, it will only make matters worse. I wasn't prepared for this bog. I should think Mr. Lupo might have mentioned it."