When about to start from the inn, Sukey asked:
"Say, Fernando, how are we goin' to find our way back?"
This was a serious question for even Fernando. He reflected over it a
moment and then said:
"It's the house at the foot of the second hill with the road or street
that winds around the cliff."
"Wouldn't it be better to take hatchets and blaze the corners of the
houses as we go along?" suggested Sukey. Fernando smiled and thought the
owners might raise some serious objections to having their houses
blazed. They were still somewhat undecided in regard to the matter, when
their landlady, with a movement about as graceful as the waddle of a
duck, came down the rickety stairs, and they in despair appealed to her.
She relieved them of their trouble in short order. On a piece of tin
over her door was the number 611. She told them the name of the street,
and assured them if they would remember that and the number, any one
would point it out to them. Besides they had only to remember the widow
Mahone, everybody in the town knew the widow Mahone.
With this assurance of safe return, the two youngsters ventured forth
into the city. They were not as verdant as the reader may imagine. Both
had been reared in the western wilderness and retained much of the
pioneer traits about them; but books had been society for them, and
their four months spent in New York and Boston had given them an urbane
polish.
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