pull the cart," said Ruth; "anyway, I do think one of us ought
to go home or our mothers will think some harm has befallen us. I'll
stay, if you would rather go."

But Winifred shook her head. She did not wish to leave the pony; neither
was she pleased at the thought of staying by herself on that lonely
road. At last, however, they decided that Ruth's plan was the best they
could think of, and Ruth started.

"I'll hurry all the way, Winifred; and Gilbert will come back as fast as
he can," she called as she started to run down the hill.

CHAPTER XII

A LONG RIDE

"I wish we had brought Hero," thought Ruth regretfully as she hurried
down the shadowy road, "then he could have come with me for company."
For at the last moment before leaving home the little girls had decided
that it was not best to let Hero accompany them. There was not room for
him in the pony-cart, and for him to race along the streets might well
mean that he would again disappear; so Ruth had been quite ready to
leave him at home. But now she would have been very glad to have him
running along beside her. "Josephine" and "Cecilia" had also been left
behind; in fact neither Winifred nor Ruth had remembered the dolls until
after they had said good-bye to Aunt Deborah. And, while Ruth was
regretting the absence of Hero, Winifred, sitting close beside Fluff,
was wishing that her beloved Josephine was there to keep her company.

"It would be a great adventure for Josephine," she thought, looking up
through the overhanging branches of the big oak under which Fluff had
stopped to rest. For a time she amused herself by braiding the long
grass and weaving it about green twigs broken from an elder-bush until
she had made a wide, shallow basket with a handle. Into this she put the
violets and wild honeysuckle, resolving to take it home as a present to
her mother. She put it carefully under the seat of the pony-cart, and
then decided to search for a spring or brook, for she was thirsty.

Fluff showed no signs of wishing to start for home, or even to eat the
tempting young grass growing near.

"If I find a brook perhaps I can lead him, and then he will get a good
drink," thought Winifred, crossing the narrow road and pushing aside a
thick growth of wild shrubs.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, for she had stepped at once on to damp yielding
moss which covered her low cut slippers and whetted her feet as
completely as if she had stepped into a brook. Just beyon