Well, for goodness' sake, where was she? Where had she come to, without
thinking a single thing about it? Right on the ridge overlooking Aunt
Hetty's house to be sure, on those rocks that hang over it, so you could
almost throw a stone down any one of the chimneys. She might just as
well go down and make Aunt Hetty a visit now she was so near, and walk
home by the side-road. Of course Paul would say, nothing could keep him
from saying, that she had planned to do that very thing, right along,
and when she left the school-house headed straight for Aunt Hetty's
cookie-jar. Well, _let_ him! She could just tell him, she'd never
_dreamed_ of such a thing, till she found herself on those rocks.

She walked more and more slowly, letting herself down cautiously from
one ledge to another, and presently stopped altogether, facing a beech
tree, its trunk slowly twisted into a spiral because it was so hard to
keep alive on those rocks. She was straight in front of it, staring into
its gray white-blotched bark. Now if _Mother_ asked her, of course she'd
have to say, yes, she had planned to, _sort of_ but not quite. Mother
would understand. There wasn't any use trying to tell things how they
really were to Paul, because to him things weren't ever
sort-of-but-not-quite. They either were or they weren't. But Mother
always knew, both ways, hers and Paul's.

She stepped forward and downward now, lightened. Her legs stretched out
to carry her from one mossed rock to another. "Striding," that was what
she was doing. Now she knew just what "striding" meant. What fun it was
to _feel_ what a word meant! Then when you used it, you could feel it
lie down flat in the sentence, and fit into the other words, like a
piece in a jig-saw puzzle when you got it into the right place.
Gracious! How fast you could "stride" down those rocks into Aunt Hetty's