for, though Cousin Ann did not stop to kiss Molly or even to look at her more than one sharp first glance, she said after a moment’s pause, during which she filled a syrup can and screwed the cover down very tight:  “Well, if her folks will let her stay, how would you like to have Molly come and stay with us till her mother gets back from the hospital?  Now you’ve got a room of your own, I guess if you wanted to you could have her sleep with you.”

“Oh, Molly, Molly, Molly!” shouted Betsy, jumping up and down, and then hugging the little girl with all her might.  “Oh, it will be like having a little sister!”

Cousin Ann sounded a dry, warning note:  “Don’t be too sure her folks will let her.  We don’t know about them yet.”

Betsy ran to her, and caught her hand, looking up at her with shining eyes.  “Cousin Ann, if you go to see them and ask them, they will!”

This made even Cousin Ann give a little abashed smile of pleasure, although she made her face grave again at once and said:  “You’d better go along back to the house now, Betsy.  It’s time for you to help Mother with the supper.”

The two children trotted back along the darkening wood road, Shep running before them, little Molly clinging fast to the older child’s hand.  “Aren’t you ever afraid, Betsy, in the woods this way?” she asked admiringly, looking about her with timid eyes.

“Oh, no!” said Betsy, protectingly; “there’s nothing to be afraid of, except getting off on the wrong fork of the road, near the Wolf Pit.”

“Oh, Ow!” said Molly, cringing.  “What’s the Wolf Pit?  What an awful name!”

Betsy laughed.  She tried to make her laugh sound brave like Cousin Ann’s, which always seemed so scornful of being afraid.  As a matter of fact, she was beginning to fear that they had made the wrong turn, and she was not quite sure that she could find the way home.  But she put this out of her mind and walked along very fast, peering ahead into the dusk.  “Oh, it hasn’t anything to do with wolves,” she said in answer to Molly’s question; “anyhow, not now.  It’s just a big, deep hole in the ground where a brook had dug out a cave. ...  Uncle Henry told me all about it when he showed it to me ... and then part of the roof caved in; sometimes there’s ice in the corner of the covered part all the summer, Aunt Abigail says.”

“Why do you call it the Wolf Pit?” asked Molly, walking very close to Betsy and holding very tightly to her hand.

“Oh, long, ever so long ago, when the first settlers came up here, they heard a wolf howling all night, and when it didn’t stop in the morning, they came up here on the mountain and found a wolf had fallen in and couldn’t get out.”

“My!  I hope they killed him!” said Molly.