"That--that's ours, if you please," said Betty. Her voice was weaker than
she had thought it would be, and quite wobbly, too. Her knees, she
confessed later, were in the same state. But she presented a brave front.
"That--that's our lunch," she added, swallowing a lump in her throat.

The man--he certainly looked like a tramp, as far as his clothes were
concerned, but his face was clean--turned toward the girls with a smile.

"Your lunch!" he exclaimed, and his voice was not unmusical, "how
fortunate!"

He did not say whether it was fortunate for them--or himself.

"We--we forgot it. We left it here," explained Mollie. "That is, I
left it here."

"That is--unfortunate," said the man. "It seems--it seems to be a fairly
substantial lunch," and he moved the bag up and down.

"It ought to be--for four of us," breathed Amy.

"Allow me," spoke the man, and with a bow he handed the missing lunch to
Betty. The girls said afterward that her hand did not tremble a bit as
she accepted it. And then the Little Captain did something most
unexpected.

"Perhaps you are hungry, too," she said, with one of her winning smiles,
a smile that seemed to set her face in a glow of friendliness. "We are
on a tramping tour--I mean a walking tour," she hastily corrected