take them on, when just as lunch
was about to be served, Parker came in to say:

"We are all out of bread, Miss Bunker. The baker forgot to stop. Shall I
send William for some?"

"Oh, let me go!" begged Vi. "I know where there is a bakery, right down
the street. It isn't far."

"Are you sure you know the way?" asked Aunt Jo.

"'Course I do," Vi answered.

"Well, you may go," said Aunt Jo. "Only be careful not to get lost.
Don't turn around the wrong corners."

"I won't," promised Vi.

But that is just what she did. She got the bread all right, but, on the
way back she stopped to pet a kitten that rubbed up against her. And
then Vi got turned around, and she went down a side street, and walked
two or three blocks before she knew that she was wrong.

"Aunt Jo doesn't live on this street," said the little girl to herself,
as she stopped and looked around. "I don't see her house and I don't see
Mr. North's. I must have come the wrong way."

So she had, and she turned to go back. But she went wrong again, making
a turn around another corner and then Vi didn't know what to do. She
stood in front of a house, with the bread under her arm, and tears came
into her eyes.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Vi. "It's terrible to be lost so near home!"

CHAPTER XII

MARGY TAKES A RIDE

This was not the first time Violet had been lost. More than once, even
in her home town of Pineville, she had wandered away over the fields or
out toward the woods, and had not been able to find her way back again.
But always, at such times, Norah or Jerry Simms, or Daddy or Mother
Bunker had come to find her and take her home.

"But I don't see any of them now," said Vi, as she gazed around her.
There were quite a number of persons on the street, for it was the noon
hour, but the little girl knew none of them, and none of them seemed to
pay any attention to her.

I think, though, almost any one of those who passed by poor little Vi,
standing there in the street, if they had known she was lost, would have
gone up to her and tried to help her.

But there were many children in the street, and several of them were
standing still, looking not very different from Vi, except that she was
crying--not a great deal, but enough to make her eyes wet.

"I guess I'd better walk along a little," said Vi to herself, after a
bit. "Maybe I'll see Aunt Jo's house, or Russ or Rose or--or somebody
that knows me."

Poor little Vi, just then, would have bee