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.
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