For a long time Allen and Betty wandered through the woods, seeing nothing and hearing nothing but the usual sights and sounds of the forest--and seemingly quite content to go on in that way forever.
It was Allen who first broke the silence. "I wish you would tell me what you are thinking about so hard, Betty. It must be very interesting, because you haven't said a word to me since we left that lazy crowd back there. 'Fess up!"
Betty flushed faintly. "You should never ask what a person thinks about on a beautiful summer, day when she is wandering through the woodland with--with----"
"Whom?" Allen prompted softly. "Go on, Betty, finish the story."
"Can't," she smiled up at him roguishly. "It's one of those 'to be continued.'"
He caught her hand, but she drew it away quickly. "Allen, what's this?" she cried.
She had accidentally brushed aside some brambles that had caught on her dress, and there close beside them, so near that she could thrust her hand into the opening, yawned the cavernous black mouth of a cave.
Allen drew her aside quickly. "Don't go near it," he commanded, in a tone that made Betty look at him in surprise. "I'm suspicious of these caves until I have investigated them myself. I am going to have a look, Betty. You stay where you are."
But the Little Captain had not been so named for nothing. She seized Allen's arm, and drew him back from the opening.
"Allen, if you go in there, I'm going, too," she cried, her eyes blazing. "Do you suppose I'm going to stand here, and see you get eaten up by a--a----"
"A what?" said Allen, putting his hands on her shoulders and laughing down at her.
"Well, whatever there is in the cave," she finished lamely. "Anyway, I'm going in with you."
"Betty, do be reasonable," he pleaded, but she flared up at that.
"Do you know, Allen, there is nothing a girl hates more than to have a boy ask her to be reasonable, when she knows she is? Anyway," her voice lowered and she pleaded her turn. "Anyway, it's lots worse to see anybody get hurt, anybody that you like, that is, than it is to get hurt yourself."
"You little soldier," Allen murmured. "But can't you see, Betty, that I am here to protect you from danger if there is any--not let you run right into it?"