eat treat to stay with her. Nan poked her
way among the people who were still standing about in the school-room
chatting together before they dispersed, but she could not see anyone
she knew. Then she waited a long while at the door, but there was no
cousin Annie, she had evidently gone home. Nan peeped out. Down the
road which led to Mr Chorley's she heard distant voices and laughter,
and saw the twinkling light of lanterns, but in the opposite direction
it was all quite dark and silent, and that was the way to cousin
Annie's. She knew it as well as possible, and it was not very far,
quite a short distance, in the _daylight_--you had only to go down the
lane, and turn a little to the right, and go in at the white gate near
the pond. A very simple matter in the daytime; but now! Nan stepped
back into the room; she would go and tell them that cousin Annie had
gone, and then someone would go with her. But to her dismay she found
the green-room dark and silent; they had all gone out by the other door
without coming through the school-room, and Nan was alone. She stood
irresolute, clutching the heavy shawl which Sophy had wrapped round her,
and feeling half inclined to cry. There was only one thing to do now,
and that was to go down the dark lane all by herself. Nan had been
brought up in habits of the most simple obedience, and it never occurred
to her to question any order. "You are to go to cousin Annie's," Sophy
had said, so of course she must go.

She choked down a little sob, and pulled open the door again, and
trotted out into the darkness. Her heavy shawl rather impeded her, so
she could not go very fast, and the road was rough and uneven for her
small feet. She looked up to see if she could find any comfortable
twinkling star for a companion, but the sky was all black and overcast,
and there was no moon. Then she said her evening prayer to herself, but
it was very short and did not last long, and then all the hymns she
knew, and then all the texts, and by that time she was nearly at the
bottom of the lane, when, oh misfortune! She caught her foot in the
dangling end of the big shawl and fell flat in the mud. It was very
hard to keep back the tears after that; but she gathered herself up as
well as she could and stumbled on, until at last she passed through the
white gate, which stood open, and reached the front door of the
Vicarage. But her troubles were not over yet, for she found that, even
by s