TUNNELING OUT
What awoke Dorothy she could not tell. For the first few moments she
lay still, realizing that there was a deadly chill in the air outside
of the heavy mass of bedclothing that weighed her body down. The frosty
air did not seem at all like the air of the room she occupied with
Tavia at Glenwood Hall.
Then--with something of a shock--she remembered that she was not with
Tavia, or at Glenwood Hall!
She felt the pressure of the warm little body of Celia, curled up like
a kitten in a ball, beside her in the bed of the best room at Mrs.
Hogan’s house. There was light enough in the room for her to see the
grim, bare nature of the place--its ugly furniture and the plain rag
carpet on the floor.
She looked at the uncurtained window and to her amazement saw that,
from bottom to top, it was masked with snow. It looked as though the
drift was higher than the very top of the window!
Was it still snowing, or had the storm ceased? Not a sound came from
without; nor could she detect a sound within the house.
There was no clock in the room and Dorothy’s own watch was in the
kitchen where she had left her clothing. She stirred about to gain an
easier position, and the little body of Celia Moran uncurled.
“Oh! oh! Tom--Dorothy----”
The murmur of the child’s voice served to wake Dorothy properly. Celia
was dreaming--of Dorothy herself, and of her lost brother. The older
girl kissed her, laid her touseled head upon the pillow, and then crept
out of the warm feathers into the cold, cold room.
There was a matchbox on the mantel behind the small sheet-iron stove.
With chattering teeth the Glenwood girl reached the matches, stooped by
the door of the stove, scratched the lucifer, and ignited the shavings
and corncobs which made sufficient kindling in the firebox to set off
the hardwood sticks piled in above the tinder.
The fire began to roar almost instantly. She darted back across the icy
floor and crept again into bed. Whether it was morning, or not, Dorothy
determined to have a fire and somehow kill the deadly chill of that
guest room.
Celia still slept. The yellow light of the fire began to send dancing
reflections upon the ceiling through the perforated draft of the
stove. Dorothy lay there and listened to the fire’s roar; but there was
no other sound in the house for some time.
The atmosphere of the room perceptibly changed. There was a little blue
haze in the air and the smell of burning varnish, for the careful Mrs.
Hogan had painted the stove to keep it from rusting and perhaps this
was the first time it had been used during the winter.
By and by Dorothy heard the creak of the stair under the heavy tread of
the farm woman. It must, the schoolgirl judged, be time to rise; yet
the snow drift kept out the morning light.
She heard Mrs. Hogan at the kitchen stove, raking down the ashes and
rattling the dampers. By and by she came through the hall and opened
the door.
“Ha!” she said. “Ye have a boomin’ fire--an’ all goin’ up the chimney,
av coorse. Fuel is nothin’ to the rich. Git up out o’ that, Cely Moran!
D’ye wanter lie abed all day? ’Tis long past sivin o’clock, and we’re
snowed in to the second story--an’ still ’tis snowin’. Git up, I say!”
Meanwhile she had partly closed the back draft and the fire roared less
angrily. Celia stirred sleepily.
“Good morning!” Dorothy said to Mrs. Hogan. “I am going to get up,
too. Will you put my clothes in here? It is getting nice and warm now.”
“I’ll sind thim in by Cely. Git out o’ that bed, now--plague o’ me
life! Scatter out inter the kitchen,” and she drove the little one
before her as one would shoo a chicken.
“It really isn’t snowing _now_; is it?” cried Dorothy, before Mrs.
Hogan could shut the door.
“Indade it is--snowin’ hard. I kin see it from me winder upstairs. But
the house is drifted around, till there’s a bank before me kitchen door
higher than the lintel. And me’ kitchen pump’s froze. Lucky there’s
water in the tea kettle and I’ll soon have it thawed. Ye’ll find
water--or ice--in that pitcher yonder, Miss.”
The woman retreated. Celia, as soon as she had got into her own
clothes, brought in Dorothy’s garments and hung them carefully on
chairs about the stove to warm before the bigger girl put them on.
“You’re a dear little maid!” cried Dorothy. “Thank you.”
“I wish I could go to that school and work for you,” said Celia,
wistfully. “Don’t you suppose I could?”
“I am afraid not, Celia,” returned Dorothy, yet wishing, too, that it
were possible. “You try your best to please Mrs. Hogan. And meantime
I’ll find your brother as quick as I can.”
Had Dorothy known what was written on that postal card from the
secretary of the ironworkers’ union, which message had so puzzled her
friend Tavia, she could not have spoken with the assurance she did.
Dorothy dressed hurriedly and managed to get enough of the ice in the
pitcher melted, meanwhile, on the stove hearth, to enable her to make
her toilet. The sting of the icy water upon her eyes and temples served
to wake her up and started her pulse at a quicker beat. She ran out
into the smoky kitchen, to see Celia setting the table while Mrs. Hogan
fried the usual pork and johnny cakes.
“Oh, that _does_ smell so good!” cried the girl from Glenwood School.
Mrs. Hogan smiled--and her smile was rare indeed!--when she heard this.
She considered that she could safely tack on an additional quarter
for breakfast in the final bill she meant to present for Dorothy’s
entertainment.
“Oh, see here!” exclaimed Celia, and ran to open the door. A white wall
of packed snow faced them.
“Oh, dear me! we are really snowed in,” said Dorothy. “However will we
manage to dig a way out?”
“Come away from that, now, ye little plague,” spoke Mrs. Hogan to
Celia. “Arrah, now! see what ye’ve done. Looker that mess of snow on
the floor.”
A hodful, at least, had become detached and fallen inward. Dorothy ran
for the brush and dustpan which hung against the bricks behind the
stove.
“I’ll clean it up, Mrs. Hogan,” she said. “You go about your work,
Celia.”
“We’ll have to dig a tunnel through to the shed door after breakfast,”
declared Mrs. Hogan. “We’ve got to get through the shed to the barn,
an’ then into the hen house. Surely, we can’t l’ave the critters ter
starve. And there’s no knowing when this storm will stop. Ye’ll not git
to school this day, I’m thinkin’, me young lady.”
“I am only glad that I am not out there in the lane under all this
snow,” replied Dorothy, gravely.
After breakfast she went upstairs with Celia to peer out at the storm.
It was, indeed, a blizzard. Scarcely a landmark was visible through
the falling snow. The fences were, of course, long since drifted over;
and the snow had been blown into the farmyard in a great mound, piled
against the side of the house to the sill of the second floor windows,
and completely covering the roofs of the lower buildings.
Mrs. Hogan put a huge boiler on the stove when they came down. She had
not thawed her pump as yet; but she opened the barricaded door and
into this boiler shoveled snow, from time to time, until she had melted
sufficient to well fill the receptacle, and had dug quite a cavern in
the snowbank.
Then, dressed in her half-mannish costume, the Amazon set to work with
a steel shovel to really excavate a tunnel through the drift to the
woodshed door. Dorothy and Celia helped by “trimming” the sides and
roof of the tunnel, and trampling down the excavated snow under foot.
The passage to the woodshed door was short. Beyond the shed the snow
filled all the space to the stables, and was heaped fifteen feet high.
They cut out the snow in blocks and heaped it to one side within the
shed. In two hours Mrs. Hogan, working as though tireless, opened the
way to the stables and they could feed the stock. Fortunately there was
a trap between the barn and the hennery through which they could throw
corn and oats to the flock.
Tunneling through the snowbank Celia thought to be lots of fun; and
Dorothy found it amusing. Mrs. Hogan’s grim face and grimmer remarks,
however, proved that she considered the situation quite serious.
“You young’uns kape yer feet dry. Have no chills, nor colds, nor other
didoes, now; for ’tis no knowin’ how long ’twould take a dochter to
git here through these drifts--an’ however would we git word to such,
anyhow, I dunno?”
Dorothy and Celia wrapped shawls around their shoulders again and went
to the upper windows to look out. Although the flakes were bigger now,
and the snow was not gathering so fast, they could not see far along
the lane; and not a moving object appeared upon the surface of the
drifts.
“Oh, I’m glad you are here, Dorothy Dale,” whispered Celia. “It would
jes’ be _dreadful_ to be smothered in with snow like this, with only
Mrs. Ann Hogan--yes, it would!”