“Oh, you ain’t exactly lost!” exclaimed the urchin, with a grin.  “I live just down the road a piece, and it’s only a mile to Bakersville.  That’s a good town.  They got a movin’ picture show there.  I went onct!”

“Did you indeed?” said Betty.  “But we can’t go there.  Isn’t there some way of getting to Rockford without going all the way back to the fork?  Why, it’s miles and miles!”

“I wish I had that man here who directed us wrongly!” exclaimed Mollie, with a flash of her dark eyes.  “I—­I’d make him get a carriage and drive us to your aunt’s house, Betty.”

“That would not be revenge enough,” declared Grace.  “He ought to be made to buy us each a box of the best chocolates.”

“Nothing like making the punishment fit the crime,” murmured Betty.

“Say, are you play-actors?” demanded the boy, who had stood in opened-mouth wonder during this dialogue.  The girls broke into peals of merry laughter that, in a measure, served to relieve the tension on their nerves.

“Now do please tell us how to get to Rockford?” begged Mollie when they had quieted down.  “We must be there to-night.”

“Well, you kin git there by goin’ on a mile further and taking the main road that goes through Sayreville,” said the boy, his mouth full of candy.

“Would that be nearer than going back to where we made the mistake?” Betty asked.

“Yep, a lot nearer.  Come on; I’ll show you as far as I’m goin’,” and the boy started off as though the task—­or shall I say, pleasure?—­of leading four pretty girls was an every-day occurrence.

“We never can get there before dark,” declared Mollie.

“Oh, yes, we will,” said Betty, hopefully.  “We can walk faster than this.”

“If you do I’ll simply give up,” wailed Grace.  “These shoes!” and she leaned against a tree.

And to the eternal credit of the other girls be it said that they did not remark:  “I told you so!”

Silently and unconcernedly, the snub-nosed boy led them on.  Finally he came to his own home, and rather ungallantly, did not offer to go farther.

“You jest keep on for about half a mile,” he said, “an’ you’ll come to a cross-road.”

“I hope it isn’t too cross,” murmured Grace, with a grave face.

“Huh?”

The boy looked at her wonderingly.

“I mean not cross enough to bite,” she went on.

“You turn to the left,” the boy continued, “and keep straight on till you get to Watson’s Corners.  Then you turn to the right, keep on past an old stone church, turn to the right and that’s a straight road to Rockford.”  He looked curiously at Grace, as though in doubt as to her sanity.  “A cross road!” he murmured.

“Gracious, we’ll never remember all that!” exclaimed Amy.

“I have it down!” said practical Betty, as she wrote rapidly in her note book.  “I’m sure we can find it.  Come on, girls!”