Betsy came to herself out of her momentary daze and snatched Molly’s hand. “Hurry! quick! We must find the Wendells before they get away!” In her agitation (for she was really very much frightened) she forgot how easily terrified little Molly was. Her alarm instantly sent the child into a panic. “Oh, Betsy! Betsy! What will we do!” she gasped, as Betsy pulled her along the aisle and out of the door.
“Oh, the Wendells can’t be gone yet,” said Betsy reassuringly, though she was not at all sure she was telling the truth. She ran as fast as she could drag Molly’s fat legs, to the horse-shed where Mr. Wendell had tied his horses and left the surrey. The horse-shed was empty, quite empty.
Betsy stopped short and stood still, her heart seeming to be up in her throat so that she could hardly breathe. After all, she was only ten that day, you must remember. Molly began to cry loudly, hiding her weeping face in Betsy’s dress. “What will we do, Betsy! What can we do!” she wailed.
Betsy did not answer. She did not know what they would do! They were eight miles from Putney Farm, far too much for Molly to walk, and anyhow neither of them knew the way. They had only ten cents left, and nothing to eat. And the only people they knew in all that throng of strangers had gone back to Hillsboro.
“What will we do, Betsy?” Molly kept on crying out, horrified by Betsy’s silence and evident consternation.
The other child’s head swam. She tried again the formula which had helped her when Molly fell into the Wolf Pit, and asked herself, desperately, “What would Cousin Ann do if she were here!” But that did not help her much now, because she could not possibly imagine what Cousin Ann would do under such appalling circumstances. Yes, one thing Cousin Ann would be sure to do, of course; she would quiet Molly first of all.
At this thought Betsy sat down on the ground and took the panic-stricken little girl into her lap, wiping away the tears and saying, stoutly, “Now, Molly, stop crying this minute. I’ll take care of you, of course. I’ll get you home all right.”
“How’ll you ever do it?” sobbed Molly.
“Everybody’s gone and left us. We can’t walk!”
“Never you mind how,” said Betsy, trying to be facetious and mock-mysterious, though her own under lip was quivering a little. “That’s my surprise party for you. Just you wait. Now come on back to that booth. Maybe Will Vaughan didn’t go home with his folks.”
She had very little hope of this, and only went back there because it seemed to her a little less dauntingly strange than every other spot in the howling wilderness about her; for all at once the Fair, which had seemed so lively and cheerful and gay before, seemed now a horrible, frightening, noisy place, full of hurried strangers who came and went their own ways, with not a glance out of their hard eyes for two little girls stranded far from home.
The bright-colored young man was no better when they found him again. He stopped his whistling only long enough to say, “Nope, no Will Vaughan anywhere around these diggings yet.”
“We were going home with the Vaughans,” murmured Betsy, in a low tone, hoping for some help from him.
“Looks as though you’d better go home on the cars,” advised the young man casually. He smoothed his black hair back straighter than ever from his forehead and looked over their heads.
“How much does it cost to go to Hillsboro on the cars?” asked Betsy with a sinking heart.
“You’ll have to ask somebody else about that,” said the young man. “What I don’t know about this Rube state! I never was in it before.” He spoke as though he were very proud of the fact.
Betsy turned and went over to the older man who had told them about the Vaughans.
Molly trotted at her heels, quite comforted, now that Betsy was talking so competently to grownups. She did not hear what they said, nor try to. Now that Betsy’s voice sounded all right she had no more fears. Betsy would manage somehow. She heard Betsy’s voice again talking to the other man, but she was busy looking at an exhibit of beautiful jelly glasses, and paid no attention. Then Betsy led her away again out of doors, where everybody was walking back and forth under the bright September sky, blowing on horns, waving plumes of brilliant tissue-paper, tickling each other with peacock feathers, and eating popcorn and candy out of paper bags.
That reminded Molly that they had ten cents yet. “Oh, Betsy,” she proposed, “let’s take a nickel of our money for some popcorn.”
She was startled by Betsy’s fierce sudden clutch at their little purse and by the quaver in her voice as she answered: “No, no, Molly. We’ve got to save every cent of that. I’ve found out it costs thirty cents for us both to go home to Hillsboro on the train. The last one goes at six o’clock.”
“We haven’t got but ten,” said Molly.
Betsy looked at her silently for a moment and then burst out, “I’ll earn the rest! I’ll earn it somehow! I’ll have to! There isn’t any other way!”
“All right,” said Molly quaintly, not seeing anything unusual in this. “You can, if you want to. I’ll wait for you here.”
“No, you won’t!” cried Betsy, who had quite enough of trying to meet people in a crowd. “No, you won’t! You just follow me every minute!
