THE LITTLE WANDERER.
Although Nellie Ribsam was only eight years old at the time she was lost
in the big woods, yet the results of the training received from her
sensible father and mother showed themselves in a marked degree on that
memorable occasion.
She had been taught, as was her brother, that under heaven she must rely
upon herself to get forward in the world. Nick was rarely if ever
allowed to extend her a helping hand in her lessons, and she was given
to understand that whatever was possible for her to do must be done
without the aid of any one.
As for sitting down and crying when in trouble, without making any
effort to help herself, she knew better than to try that when either her
father or mother were likely to find it out.
Her intention, when she left school that afternoon before the session
closed, was to keep on in the direction of Dunbarton until she met Nick
returning.
She turned off at the forks, and did not lessen her gait until she
reached the woods. Her rapid walking caused her to feel quite warm, and
the cool shade of the woods was refreshing.
She began wandering aimlessly forward, swinging her hat in her hand,
singing snatches of school songs, and feeling just as happy as a little
girl can feel who is in bounding health, high spirits, and without an
accusing conscience.
It was not the time of year for flowers, and Nellie knew better than to
look for any. They had drooped and died long ago; but some of the leaves
were turning on the trees, and they gave a peculiar beauty to the
autumnal forest.
At intervals she caught sight of the cleanly, symmetrical maple, with
some of its leaves turning a fiery red and looking like flecks of flame
through the intervening vegetation. At the least rustling of the wind
some of the leaves came fluttering downward as lightly as flakes of
snow; the little brown squirrel scampered up the shaggy trunks and out
upon the limbs, where, perching on his hind legs, he peeped
mischievously down at the girl, as if inviting her to play hide-and-seek
with him; now and then a rabbit, fat and awkward from his gluttony on
the richness around him, jumped softly a few steps, then munched rapidly
with his jaws, flapped his long silken ears, looked slyly around with
his big, pretty eyes, and, as the girl made a rush toward him, he was
off like a shot.
The woods were fragrant with ripening grapes and decaying vegetation,
and were putting on a garb whose flaming splendor surpassed the hues of
spring.
Indeed, everything conspired to win a boy or girl away from study or
work, and to cause the wish on the part of both that they might be a
bird or squirrel, with no thought of the responsibilities of life.
Nellie Ribsam forgot for the time everything else except her own
enjoyment; but by-and-by the woods took on such tempting looks that she
turned off from the highway she had been following, with the intention
of taking a stroll, which she meant should not lead her out of sight of
the road.
The first view which stopped her was that of a large vine of wild
grapes.
Some of them were green, some turning, while others were a dark purple,
showing they were fully ripe: the last, as a matter of course, were at
the top.
These wild grapes were small and tart, inferior to those which grew in
the yard of Nellie at home; but they seemed to be trying to hide in the
woods, and they were hard to get, therefore they were more to be desired
than the choicest Catawba, Isabella, or Concord.
The main vine, where it started from the ground, was as thick as a man's
wrist, and it twisted and wound about an oak sapling as if it were a
great African constrictor seeking to strangle the young tree. Other
vines branched out from the sides until not only was the particular
sapling enfolded and smothered, but the greedy vine reached out and
grasped others growing near it.
Nellie felt like the fox who found the grapes more tempting the longer
he looked at them.
"I'm going to have some of them," she said, and straightway proceeded to
help herself.
She climbed as readily as Nick himself could have done, and never
stopped until she was so high that the sapling bent far over with her
weight. Then she reached out her chubby hand and plucked a cluster of
the wild fruit. They were about the size of buckshot, and when her sound
teeth shut down on them, the juice was so sour that she shut both eyes
and felt a twinge at the crown of her head as though she had taken a
sniff of the spirits of ammonia.
But the grapes were none the less delicious for all that; the fact that
there seemed to be something forbidden about them added a flavor that
nothing else could give.
Nellie had managed to crush a handful of the vinegar-like globules, when
she caught sight of another vine deeper in the woods. It was much larger
and climbed fully a dozen yards from the ground, winding in and out
among the limbs of a ridgy beech, which seemed to be forever struggling
upward to get away from the smothering embrace of the vegetable python.
Five minutes later, Nellie was clambering upward like a monkey, never
pausing until the bending tree-top warned her that if she went any
higher it would yield to her weight.
Nellie disposed of one bunch and that was enough: she concluded that she
was not very hungry for grapes and, without eating or even gathering
more, she devoted herself to another kind of enjoyment.
Standing with one foot on a limb and the other on one near it, she
grasped a branch above her and began swaying back and forth, with the
vim and abandon of a child in a patent swing.
The tree bent far over as she swung outward, then straightened up and
inclined the other way as her weight passed over to that side. Any one
looking at the picture would have said that a general smash and giving
away were certain, in which case the girl was sure to go spinning
through the limbs and branches, as though driven forth by the springs
within the big gun which fling the young lady outward just as the
showman touches off some powder.
But a green sapling is very elastic, and, although the one climbed by
Nellie bent back and forth like a bow, it did not give way. Her hair
streamed from her head, and there was a thrilling feeling as the wind
whistled by her ears, and she seemed to be shooting like a bird through
space.
All this was well enough, and it was no more than natural that Nellie
should have forgotten several important facts: she was so far from the
highway that she could not see any one passing over it; the rush of the
wind in her ears shut out sounds that otherwise would have been noticed,
and she had gone so far and had lingered so long by the way that it was
time to look for Nick on his return from Dunbarton, even though he was
later than he expected to be.
It was while she was swinging in this wild fashion that her brother
drove by on his way home, without either suspecting how close they were
to each other.
Nellie displayed a natural, childish thoughtlessness by keeping up this
sport for a half hour longer, when she came down to the ground, simply
because she was tired of the amusement.
Although out of sight of the road she managed to find her way back to it
without trouble. With her lunch basket in hand, she continued in the
direction of Dunbarton, taking several mouthfuls of the bread which had
been left over at noon.
In this aimless manner she strolled forward, stopping now and then to
look at the squirrel or rabbit or the yellow-hued warbler, the noisy and
swift-flying finch, the russet-coated thrush, or dark brown and mottled
woodpecker, as his head rattled against the bark of the tree trunks,
into which he bored in quest of worms.
The first real surprise of the girl came when she reached the bridge.
This proved that she was more than four miles from home, a distance much
greater than she had suspected.
"Where can Nick be?" she asked herself, never once thinking that they
might have missed each other when she was swinging in the tree-top. It
struck her that the day was nearly gone, for she noticed the gathering
twilight diffusing itself through the forest.
"I don't think I will go any farther," she said; "Nick will be along
pretty soon, and I'll wait here for him."
Standing on the bridge and looking down the road and listening for the
sound of the carriage wheels were tiresome to one of Nellie's active
habits, and it was not long before she broke off some of the bread, set
down her lunch basket, and then dropped some crumbs into the water.
As they struck the surface, sending out little rings toward the shore,
several tiny fish came up after the food. Nellie laughed outright, and,
in her eagerness, was careless of how she threw the crumbs, most of
which fell upon the bank.
It occurred to her that she could do better by going down to the edge of
the stream, where she would not mistake her aim.
Childlike, she did not pause to think of the wrong of so doing, for she
ought to have known that her parents never would have consented to such
an act.
Just there, Nellie, like many another little girl, made a great mistake.