eckoning to us. What do you suppose he wants?"

"I don't know; breakfast, maybe," Lucile answered. "Suppose you girls run
over and tell him I'll come right away. I do want to locate that bird."

"All right; only don't be long," Jessie advised, as they started, arm in
arm, toward the inn. "We'll have some time after breakfast to do the
locating."

Lucile retorted laughingly, and was off in the direction from which the
sweet notes had seemed to come.

"Of course, he wouldn't sing now that I want him to in a hurry," she
communed with herself. "Any one of these birds might be the one as far as
looks are concerned."

She was just about to despair, and had almost made up her mind to turn
back, when the golden note rose again and she stopped, entranced. There,
over her head and not five feet away, swaying perilously on a slender
twig, balanced the little songster, pouring out his joy to a responsive
world.

"Oh, you darling!" cried Lucile, impulsively. "I wish I could take you
home with me, which you would not like at all. I must ask Dad what you
are; he would probably know."

So, triumphant, she started happily along the path, anxious to tell the
girls of her luck. It was a great temptation to linger along the way; it
would be nice to take back with her a bunch of wild flowers. She would
give them to a waiter, and see that they were put upon their table.

With this in view, she hastened along, not noticing that the sun had gone
under a cloud and that the path to the road was very long.

Therefore, she was surprised, when she emerged from the woodland, to find
the sky, formerly all blue and fleecy clouds, changed to a threatening,
lowering gray.

"But where is the inn?" she stammered, looking about her, bewildered.
Then, as the appalling truth struck home, she grew pale with
consternation.

"How could I do such a thing?" she wailed. "I must have taken the wrong
path, and now I am goodness knows where. And even the sun has
disappeared. Now I am in a nice fix," and she gazed about her helplessly
and vexedly, not knowing which way to turn.

"Well, there's no use standing here; that never did anybody any good,"
she said, at last. "If my weather eye does not deceive me, I am in for a
good wetting, if I can't find shelter anywhere. Oh, the folks will be
wild!"

With these and other disquieting thoughts, she started to push her way
along the deserted road, with the forgotten wild flowers clutched tightly
in her hand.