"Genevieve!--Genev--ieve!" But where, still, could it come from? There
was not a soul in sight. The garden (for it was Miss Camilla's vegetable
garden) was absolutely deserted of human occupation. But Genevieve
wisely decided to follow the sound, so she began to pick her way
gingerly between the rows of beans, climbing on quite a forest of tall
poles. It was when she had passed these that she came upon something
that caused her a veritable shock.
The ground in Miss Camilla's cucumber patch, for the space of ten or
twelve feet square, had sunk down into a strange hole, as if in a sudden
earthquake. What did it all mean? And, as Genevieve hesitated on its
brink, she was startled almost out of her little shoes to hear her name
called faintly and in a muffled voice from its depths.
"Genev--ieve!" It was the voice of Doris, though she could see not the
slightest vestige of her.
"Here I am!" answered Genevieve quaveringly. "What do you want, Dowis?"
"Oh, thank God!" came the reply. "Go get--some one. Quick. We're--buried
alive! It--caved in. Hurry--baby!"
"Who s'all I get?" demanded Genevieve. And well she might ask, for as
far as any one knew, there was not a soul within a mile of them.
"Oh--I don't--know!" came the answering voice. "Go find--someone.
Anyone. We'll die--here--if you--don't!" Genevieve was not sure she knew
just what that last remark meant, but it evidently indicated something
serious.
"All right!" she responded. "I will twy!" And she trotted off to the
front of the house.
Here, however, she stopped to consider. Where _was_ she to go to find
any one? She could not go back home,--she did not know the way. She
could not go back to the river,--the way was full of pitfalls in the
shape of thorny vines that scratched her face and tripped her feet, and
besides, Sally had particularly warned her not to venture in that
direction--ever. After all, the most likely place to find any one was
surely along the road, for she had, very rarely when sitting on Miss
Camilla's porch, observed a wagon driven past. She would walk along the
road and see if she could find anybody.
Had Genevieve been older and with a little more understanding, she would
have comprehended the desperate plight that had befallen her sister and
Doris and Miss Camilla. And she would have lent wings to her feet and
scurried to the nearest dwelling as fast as those feet would carry her.
But she was scarcely more than a baby. The situation, though peculiar,
did not strike her as so much a matter for haste as for patient waiting
till the person required should happen along. As she didn't see any one
approaching in either direction, she decided to return to the house and
keep a strict eye on the road.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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