It is almost at the end of things, and the little boy did not
know whether he could find it. What was even worse, he presently
did not know whether he could get back home again. He had crept
through the fence and run and run, and then walked and walked,
and now he had decided that he didn't care much about going on.
Some other time would do as well; to-morrow would be all right.
This did not feel like a lucky day; some other day would be
luckier.

David felt very virtuous. It seemed to him that he had not meant
to run away at all. He was not a bad little boy; he was a good
little boy, but he soon began to feel annoyed; for the way home
didn't have any straightness to it; the way home began to get
more and more crooked, and the houses began to seem strange and
unfriendly; they stared at him rudely, and none of them looked
either like home or like the Doctor's house.

The sad thing was that he had only one way to tell which was the
Doctor's house, and that was a wrong way. He was looking for a
yellow dog that scratched his head with his toenails and knocked
his elbow on the board-walk when he did it. Such a dog once lay
in front of the Doctor's house. So now, as David kept going and
going on, he was looking out for a yellow dog that should knock
with his elbow when he scratched his head with his toenails. Once
a black dog did it, but that was stupid of him; he needn't try to
fool David.

After a long, long while a great tiredness came upon the little
boy, and there was such a grinding ache in him that he knew
hungry-time had come. He passed a bakeshop that breathed out a