Kate, however, remained cheerful.
"It's nothing!" she exclaimed.

"I can soon get wood for a fire." Under the bunk she had found an old axe, and with it she proceeded to chop up the camp table.
"The only thing I'm afraid of," she said, "is that the boys will start out to look for us, and that if they find our tracks in the snow, they'll come on up here and run afoul of that fox before they know it." "We can shout to them," Ellen suggested.
Not much later, in fact, they began to make the forest resound with loud, clear calls.

For a long while the only answer to their cries came from two owls; but Kate was right in thinking that we boys would set out to find them.
Addison, Halstead and I had been up in Lot 32 that day with the old Squire, making an estimate of timber, and we did not reach home until after dark.

Grandmother met us with the news that the girls had gone to Dunham's open for partridge-berry vines, and had not returned.

She was very uneasy about them; but we were hungry and, grumbling a little that the girls could not come home at night as they were expected to, sat down to supper.
"I am afraid they've lost their way," grandmother said, after a few minutes.