“But we can’t leave her all alone on the road,” spoke Betty, indicating the child.

“Don’t ’eeve me!” pleaded the lost tot.  “Me want one of my muvvers!”

“It’s getting worse and worse,” sighed Mollie, wanting to laugh, but not daring to.

Slowly the girls proceeded in the direction they had been going.  They hoped they might meet someone who either would be looking for the child, or else a traveler who could direct them properly to her house, or who might even assume charge of the little one.  For it was getting late and the girls did not feel like spending the night in some strange place.  It was practically out of the question.

They were going along, Betty holding one of the child’s hands, the other small fist tightly clutching some sticky chocolates, when a turn of the road brought the outdoor girls in sight of a lad who was seated on a roadside rock, tying a couple of rags around his left foot, which was bleeding.

Beside the boy, on the ground, was a pack such as country peddlers often carry.  The lad seemed in pain, for as the girls approached, their footfalls deadened by the soft dust of the road, they heard him murmur: 

“Ouch!  That sure does hurt!  It’s a bad cut, all right, and I don’t see, Jimmie Martin, how you’re going to do much walking!  Why couldn’t you look where you were going, and not step on that piece of glass?”

He seemed to be finding fault with himself.

“Gracious!” exclaimed Mollie.  “I hope this isn’t another lost one.  We seem to be getting the habit.”

“He appears able to look after himself,” said Amy.

The boy heard their voices and looked up quickly.  Then, after a glance at them, he went on binding up his foot.  But at the sight of him the little girl cried: 

“Oh, it’s Dimmie!  Dat’s my Dimmie!  He take me to my two muvvers!” She broke away from Betty and ran toward the boy peddler.

“Why, it’s Nellie Burton!” the lad exclaimed.  “Whatever are you doing here?”

“I’se losted!” announced the child, as though it was the greatest fun in the world.  “I’se losted, and dey found me, but dey don’t know where my two muvvers is.  ’Oo take me home, Dimmie.”

“Of course I will, Nellie.  That is, if I can walk.”

“Did oo hurt oo’s foot?”

“Yes, Nellie.  I stepped on a piece of glass, and it went right through my shoe.  But it’s stopped bleeding now.”

“Do you know this little girl?” asked Betty.  “We found her down the road, but she can’t seem to tell us where she lives.  First she points in one direction and then the other, and—­”

“And we can’t understand about her two mothers,” broke in Mollie.  “Do, please, if you can, straighten it out.  Do you know her?”

“Yes, ma’am,” answered the boy peddler, and his voice was pleasant.  He took off a rather ragged cap politely, and stood up on one foot, resting the cut one on the rock.  “She’s Nellie Burton, and she lives about a mile down that way,” and he pointed in the direction from which the girls had come.