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the cement driveway.
    “Oh, Honey!” Trixie groaned. “You know she’ll be a worse nuisance than Bobby! Besides, she doesn’t have a bike, and we’ll have to take turns letting her use ours!”
    “Don’t worry,” Honey said calmly. “I heard Miss Crandall tell the governess that Gaye must start practicing the sonata by ten o’clock sharp. There’s no chance of her tagging along with us.”
    “Then why do we wait? It’s getting late,” Trixie reminded her friend, “and I promised Dad that we’d be home before dark, without fail.”
    Honey looked troubled. “But I practically told her we’d wait until she had asked her aunt.” She looked appealingly at her adopted brother. Whenever Honey had to make an important decision, she liked to get Jim’s advice. “What do you think we’d better do?” she asked him.
    “Simple. Just go on, you kids. It’s so close to ten o’clock now that I doubt if her aunt even lets her come back here to tell you she can’t go with you. I’ll be busy here for a few minutes, and if she does show up, I’ll tell her the truth. You knew she had to practice, so you didn’t wait, but you were sorry she couldn’t go. If she gets angry, she’ll get over it.” He waved them on.
    “That makes sense,” Trixie agreed with a grin. “Come on, Honey.” And she was mounted on her bike and on her way in a minute.
    As they cycled, side by side, along Glen Road toward the first turnoff that Brian had marked on the map, Trixie was more silent than usual. She was wrestling with her conscience. She had promised her mother she would be kind to little Gaye, and she had meant to be. But she had an uneasy feeling that running off the way they had would show the child that they hadn’t wanted her along, or they’d have waited for her and told her they were disappointed she couldn’t come.
    “There’s Old Telegraph Road just up ahead, I think,” Honey called, “where that car’s crossing. Does the map say we go east or west on it?”
    “I’ll check and see.” Trixie reached into her pocket and kept on pedaling. “I don’t remember.”
    “Neither do I,” Honey admitted with a giggle that broke off suddenly when she saw the look on Trixie’s face as Trixie braked her bike suddenly and felt frantically first in one pocket of her jacket and then the other. “What’s the matter?”
    “The map,” Trixie told her glumly, giving up the search. “Jim didn’t give it back to me. Now what are we going to do?”
     

A Face at the Window ● 5
     
    GLEEPS! I HATE to turn back now, but I suppose we’ll have to.” Trixie leaned dejectedly against her bicycle. “Without that map, we’re sunk.”
    “Maybe there’s some kind of a sign up there where we’re supposed to turn. It just might say ‘Martin’s Marsh,’ in plain English,” Honey suggested. “Let’s get started again, before I notice how tired my legs are!”
    “Good idea!” Trixie agreed hastily. “Mine are getting a bit wobbly, too. They’re sending distress signals to my so-called brain.” Trixie groaned as she settled herself again on the bike. “Let’s go.”
    There were no signs pointing the way to Martin’s Marsh around the corner of Old Telegraph Road. As a matter of fact, there were no signs of any sort, and, except for two or three lines of tire tracks in the soft, sandy dirt, there was no indication that anyone used the old road. Old telegraph poles, some leaning well out °f line, seemed loosely held together by a few slack wires.
    There wasn’t a hint in the quiet solitude of the spot that this road, not so long ago, had been a highway from the river to the rich interior valley. Only a distant humming gave evidence that, not too far away, a great concrete ribbon of throughway stretched for a hundred miles, from city to city.
    “Well, here we are,” Trixie said dismally, “and I suppose that whichever way we decide to go, we’ll be going the wrong way.”
    But Honey, off her bike now, was