That is the difference between you and Anna, you see." "Well," said Betty thoughtfully, "I didn't do as I was told, but I think I've got the best of it--especially," she added, "if Anna _is_ left behind." Dan seemed to take it as a personal insult that she should dwell on such a possibility.

"If you say anything more about Anna being left behind," he said, "I'll put you out of the cart and send you back to look for her." "Then there would be two of us lost instead of one," said Betty aggravatingly, "and oh, wouldn't you get into a row when you got home!" "She must be on ahead," said Kitty, anxious to make peace.
"Only I didn't think she had had time to get so far." "Perhaps some one has given her a lift," said Dan, with sudden hope.
"Anna is sharp enough to take or to ask for one if she had the chance.
She knows it is a tight pack for us all to get in this cart at once, and she would think Mokus would behave as badly going home as he did on the way out." This all seemed to them so likely, that they drove on again gaily, their minds quite easy about her; all except Betty, who persisted in gazing back at the tors as long as they were in view, in the hope of seeing a signal of distress.

Mokus stepped out at a pace that the carrots had never roused him to on the outward journey, yet darkness had come on before they reached Gorlay.
"Isn't it like old times," sighed Betty happily, "driving through the dark and the wet, and then reaching home, and changing and having a jolly tea by the fire, and there will be no Aunt Pike, and we will be able to stay up as late as we like--" "But there will be Anna," said Tony.

"It won't be _quite_ the same." But, alas, there was no Anna, and her absence on this particular occasion did much more to upset their evening than her presence would have done.

In answer to their inquiries as to when and how she got back, they were told that she had not got back at all.