“Good-bye, dear old church,” she said softly to herself.

They drove around the corner of the little neglected graveyard, where the headstones gleamed white in the morning sunshine, above the dark, glossy green of the myrtle vines.  How peaceful and quiet it seemed.  The dew still shone in tiny beads on the cobwebs, spun across the grass, a spicy smell of cedar boughs floated across the road to them, and a dove called somewhere in the distant woodlands.  As they passed, a wild rose hung over the gray pickets of the straggling old fence, and waved a spray of pale pink blossoms to them.

“Good-bye,” she whispered, turning for one more look at the familiar headstones.  They were like old friends; she had wandered among them so often.  One held her gaze an instant, with its well-known marble hand, pointing the place in a marble book in which was carved one text.  How often she had spelled the words, pointing out the deeply carven letters to Davy:  “Be ye also ready.”

She had a vague feeling that the headstones knew she was going away and would miss her.  “Good-bye,” she said to them, too, nodding the white sunbonnet gravely.  It seemed a solemn thing to start on such a journey.  After leaving the church there was only one more place to bid good-bye, and that was the schoolhouse sitting through its lonely vacation time in a deserted playground, gone to weeds.

There was no time to spare at the station.  Mr. Appleton tied the horses and hurried to have Betty’s trunk checked.  The shriek of the locomotive coming down the track made Betty turn cold.  It was like a great demon thundering toward her.  Davy edged closer to her, moved by the strange surroundings to ask a question.

“Say, Betty, ain’t you afraid?”

“Yes,” she confessed, squeezing the warm little hand in her own, which had suddenly seemed to turn to ice.  “My heart is going bump-bump-bump like a scared wild rabbit’s; but I keep saying over and over to myself what the python said.  Don’t you remember in Kaa’s hunting?  ’A brave heart and a courteous tongue, said he, they shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling.’  It can’t be such a very big jungle that I’m going into, and godmother will meet me in a few hours.  Don’t forget me, Davy, while I’m gone.”

She stooped to give the little fellow a hug and a kiss on each dimpled cheek, for the train had stopped, and Mr. Appleton was waiting to shake hands and lift her up the steps.  Betty stumbled into the first vacant seat she saw, and sat up primly, afraid to glance behind her.  In her lap, tightly clasped by both hands, she held a little old-fashioned basket of brown willow.  It had two handles and a lid with double flaps.  She carried it because she had no travelling-bag.  Her lunch was in that, her pass, five nickels, and the Red Ridinghood handkerchief.

“You can let that be a sort of warning to you,” said Mrs. Appleton, at parting, “not to get into conversation with strangers.  Red Ridinghood never would have got into trouble if she hadn’t stopped to tell the Wolf all she knew.”