It was the snowiest part of the season that Katherine and Peggy rode
back into when they returned from their Christmas vacation in the Middle
West.
The school grounds shone and blazed under a triumphant sun, and out
around them as far as they could see was a great white world. One of the
most important gifts of the Foster family to the two girls had been two
pairs of snow-shoes: not the poorly constructed, make-believe affairs
that are sometimes on sale in cities where there is never enough snow to
use them, but real Indian-made shoes for which Mrs. Foster had sent to
Canada.
Naturally, they wanted more than anything else to try them. So the first
day that Mrs. Forest gave them permission they went out on the porch of
the Andrews dormitory, comfortably dressed in white sweaters and white
tam-o'-shanters, with moccasins on their feet and their beloved
snow-shoes ready to strap on in their hands. After some grunting and
much tugging the shoes were adjusted, and then the two expected to
fairly sail over the white world, away, away, like ice-boats, as fast as
the wind. But, oh, for the things that look so easy! There was a good
crust over the snow, but at the first step--well, Katherine seemed to be
trying to walk on her head instead of her feet, that was all. In trying
to pick her up Peggy herself fell headlong, and there they lay,
ignominiously waving their snow-shoes in the air, shrieking with
laughter and so limp from their merriment that they could not get up
again.
It was only after many attempts that they stood erect once more,
powdered over and caked with snow where they had plunged through the
crust, and very red in the face and still shaking with laughter.
"I put my toe down first," gasped Katherine between spasms, "just as I
would if I was walking ordinarily. I forgot that father said the foot
must come down flat. I've seen people snow-shoe, but I never--t-tried
it--oh, dear me, I'm almost exhausted to start out with."
Then once again, with the utmost gravity, the two made the attempt, and
Peggy almost at once got the wonderful swinging motion of the far
northerners that makes snow-shoeing one of the most delightful and
exhilarating sports in the world. To be warm in the midst of cold, to
glow from forehead to feet with life and heat and happiness, all this
glorious new experience she was feeling for the first time. But
Katherine could not put her foot down correctly and failed to get into
the rhythm of the thing at all. And as sure as they came to a hillock
over she went helplessly, and remained deep in the snow until Peggy
pulled her out, with scant sympathy, but with much merry appreciation of
her snow-powdered face and its look of wondering appeal.
Nevertheless, in spite of difficulties and delays, they had covered two
meadows and a large open field without more stress of adventure than
they found pleasant. All of a sudden Peggy pointed ahead. There,
gleaming on before them, straight ahead and over the crest of a bit of
rising ground, were the glistening snow-shoe marks of another explorer
who had recently gone that way before them. The sun shone into the
criss-cross pattern of the steps, which seemed to the girls to be both
invitation and challenge.
Katherine adapted the quotation, laughing. "If I could leave behind me
any such even tracks as that it might be worth while going on, but when
you can't get the swing of it, Peggy, you can't keep warm, and while I
want to learn, sometime, I think it wasn't born in me as it was in you,
and it will need several practice attempts before I can be in your class
at all. So I'm going back--for now--do you want to come, or are you
going on--?"
Peggy looked back toward the familiar roofs of Andrews, and then she
looked away out over the barren fields in their whiteness, new and
untouched save for the gleaming snow-shoe tracks that called and called
to her to be as adventurous as they.
"I guess I'll go on," she said, a hint of abandon in her voice.
"Well, good-by, hon," said Katherine, meekly taking her leave. "I will
get about as much more of this as I want going back, but I hope you have
a nice time--and--and end up at tea somewhere just as we were going to."
"Tea by myself would be horrid," Peggy called after her. "I won't be
long, but I just must have some more, I love it so."
Then she turned her face to the snow-shoe tracks, and with a little gay
song on her lips took up their trail.
"I'm Robinson Crusoe," she told herself blithely, "and these tracks are
the good man Friday's. And we are the only two people that there are at
all, and both of us have been finding it so lonely by ourselves."
Several of the Andrews girls had snow-shoes and Peggy wondered which one
the maker of these tracks might be.
"I'll try to walk right in her steps," Peggy decided, "and then I'll get
just the right method--but, oh, my goodness, what a tall girl she must
be! These footprints are so far apart I can't possibly take such long
steps. She must be a wonderful snow-shoeist--maybe she won't want to
walk with me even when I do catch up to her, since she's apparently so
much more expert."
With ludicrous attempts to fit her steps into those of Friday, she
pursued her way until at last she had climbed the hill where the tracks
had at first been lost, and there they were continuing, forever, it
seemed.
Without hesitation Peggy followed. Lost to all but the exhilaration of a
brand new exercise, and the stimulus of the cold wind that yet never
chilled her glowing face, she kept on until Andrews was a thing of the
past, and she could not have found her way back except for the tracks
she was making now. And then all of a sudden she noticed something was
different. The footprints no longer gleamed in her eyes, and the
beautiful dazzle of the snow was blotted out. In an instant more a
whirling mass of moist snow flakes was falling about her, obscuring
everything but their own fantastic, falling selves.
"Well," decided she promptly, "I guess I'll be getting back."
But when she turned back the wind came rushing in her face and took her
breath and nearly blew her down.
"Well," she changed her mind. "I guess I won't. Friday, where are
you--you must be somewhere out in this sudden storm, too. And if I could
only find you I wouldn't feel as lost and shaky as I do now. Misery
loves company--not that I'm miserable--but something"--she choked back a
sob, "something seems to be gloomy in my heart."
Since she could not go back, and since the thought of coming up with
Friday was a very comforting one, she plodded on, winking the snow out
of her eyes and shaking it off of her cap and out of her hair.
She could scarcely see the tracks ahead of her now, as the new snow was
fast obliterating them, and her own steps were made with increasing
difficulty. Anyone who has ever tried to snow-shoe over soft, new-fallen
snow knows the hardship of Peggy's predicament.
All at once she discovered that she could not lift her left foot at all.
Try as she would, it would not rise and swing forward to its next
step.--Paralyzed! The horror of her situation, there all alone in the
cold and snow, out of sight of everybody, slowly being paralyzed with no
one to know or care, filled her with momentary hopelessness.
"Oh, Friday," she thought, "I don't see how you could have snow-shoed so
far ahead of me as not to have been caught up with by now. Dear, dear,
if I could only find that girl, maybe she would try to drag me to some
farm house, or something. If she's one of the Andrews girls she wouldn't
want me to freeze to death out here all by myself. Maybe if I called
very loud she'd hear and come back--"
"Hello!" she shouted forth into the snow-filled world. But there was no
answer and the sound of her own voice, so hollow and lonely, did
anything but cheer her up, so she did not try again.
With one last great effort of will she tried to move the stubborn left
foot. It was useless,--stuck in the snow and helpless it remained.
"Oh," she murmured, the tears beginning to run down her cheeks to mingle
with the wet snow flakes melting there.
All of a sudden a dark form loomed up out of the blinding snow
immediately ahead. There was the jar of a collision. Peggy clutched her
hands together, not knowing whether to be glad or terrified.
And then she saw that the figure was that of a very red-faced young man,
who was also wearing snow-shoes.
"Friday!" Peggy cried out, realizing in one illuminating instant that
this was the track-maker she had been following as Crusoe.
"No, it's Saturday," replied the young man, somewhat puzzled, "but I
don't see what that has to do with it. I'm awfully afraid I hurt you,
bumping into you like that, but I never dreamed there was anyone about
in a storm like this. Have you seen anything of a little dog? I lost him
a while back."
"No," shivered Peggy. "I'm afraid there isn't much use looking for him
if he's very little. Here am I a perfectly strong girl and yet even I
can't go any farther. I--can't--go--another--step--" Sobs fought with
her words, and the young good-looking face grew redder than ever.
"Tired?" he asked, "so tired that you can't walk? Well, then, I'm mighty
glad I came. Wait just a minute till I get a deep breath and I'll carry
you. The extra weight will make us sink in a lot in this soft snow, but
if you don't mind the joggly walking I can easily manage--"
Peggy shook her head. "No, you'd better go on by yourself," she
insisted. "I think a person would be awfully hard to carry in
snow-shoes, they'd hang down and flop about so. And I'm sorry about your
poor little dog, but I think it isn't any use your waiting for him.
You'd much better save yourself," she advised.
"Now,--come," said the other.
"Listen, I'm paralyzed," Peggy confessed. "My left foot just
won't--won't work, you know, I can't get it to snow-shoe another step.
It just stays still. It's paralyzed--"
What was that--could she believe her eyes? The young man had glanced
down sympathetically enough toward the paralyzed foot but was it any
subject for such wild fits of mirth as he immediately went into? Was it
right that he should laugh and laugh and point, speechless, and then
clap his hand over his mouth and go off again?
"You are very cruel and perfectly horrid," cried Peggy sharply, "and I
hate, I _hate_ you!"
"O--oh, pardon me, little Hot-Temper, but look back at your snow-shoe,
_please_," and the laugh distorted his face once more.
Painfully and indignantly Peggy screwed her cold face over her left
shoulder and looked down.
"Why--why," she gasped all out of breath, with astonishment, "how did it
get there?"
For there, comfortably ensconced on the back of her snow-shoe, waiting
for a free ride, sat, as perky as you please a plump puppy, his head
cocked interestedly on one side, and his wide mouth open in an inquiring
fashion as if he would like to know what she was going to do about it
now that she had found him out.
"The--the--smart little thing!" Peggy couldn't help exclaiming. "There
he was, being a parasite, while I was supposed to do the walking.--Only
it's a good joke on him, as I couldn't."
"As soon as the soft snow fell, I suppose the little fellow sank in
pretty deep every step," the young man grinned, stooping and sweeping
the quivering, frisking body into his arms. "And the rascal was going to
take it easy as soon as he saw your snow-shoes coming along. Lucky I
missed him when I did,--and you're not paralyzed now, are you?"
"No," laughed Peggy, "it seems I'm not. Oh, wasn't that funny? There I
was dying all by myself a minute ago of something that I didn't have at
all."
"I say, what we ought to do, though--there is a tea house somewhere near
here where we can get something hot and then you'll feel a lot better
and I don't mind saying that I will too. Come on, I know the way, and
I'll walk on the windy side of you like this and--why, it's going fine,
we'll be there in no time."
With courage and interest and even happiness surging back into her heart
now that this big handsome boy was striding along by her side and
cheering her with laughing remarks that ignored the wild storm about
them, Peggy found snow-shoeing exhilarating once more, and they made
good time, and were soon stamping in to the little tea house.
In the neighborhood of Andrews were a number of tea rooms and dainty
restaurants, for it was a rich school, and a good share of the girls'
pocket-money went for good things to eat. Peggy was familiar with many
of them, but she had never happened to come here before. So she knew
that they must be a greater distance from the school than she had
supposed. Also, most of the people seated around the adorable little
tables were boys instead of girls, and they all looked up with interest
at the entrance of the snowy pair.
"Why, hello, Jim," one of the boys called out to Peggy's companion.
"Playing Santa Claus?"
Jim merely smiled and bowed, and guided Peggy to a table by a roaring
open fire. Then he took her sweater and cap and flung them across a
chair to dry.
"Where do all these boys come from?" inquired Peggy. "It looks like a
perfect wilderness around here."
"We are near Anderwood, the boys' prep school," explained her companion.
"I used to go there--just last year, in fact--and I was over visiting
some of my friends to-day. Most of the fellows are having exams right
now, you know, and there were two hours this afternoon when every fellow
I knew was booked for something, so I borrowed a pair of snow-shoes and
a dog and--took a stroll."
"And you strolled right over to a girls' school," laughed Peggy.
"As fast as I could go," the young man answered without embarrassment.
"I'll tell you just what I was going to do, too. I don't know a soul at
Andrews--or didn't until I almost ran over you in the storm. But I was
just going to look at a certain window. Now, I bet you'd hate to tell me
what you think of me."
"A certain window," mused Peggy. "Are you a carpenter and did you want
to see how it was made?"
Her mischievous taunt brought an explanation.
"I'm an Amherst man," he began, and Peggy leaned her elbows on the
table, forgetful of the steaming soup that had just been set before her.
"And I had finished my exams, so I took a vacation to this part of the
country, where I used to go to school. The last time I was around here I
came up for the game, early in the fall. And--well, you know how it is
with glee club fellows, they sing their heads off when their team has
won, and I guess we serenaded every corner of the Andrews dorms until
midnight. Do you remember--did you happen to be awake and hear us?"
"Oh, yes," breathed Peggy ecstatically, and then a furious flush went
over her face. Was her awful adventure of that evening to be recalled
now--would he guess that she--_she_, whom he had saved from the storm
was the very one who had toppled the terrible rose-tree in its heavy
jardiniere down onto his head as if she were firing on him from a
Zeppelin? So he was one of the young men she had nearly killed! What a
mercy that he had not died, after all. With a crushing wave of memory,
the whole moonlit scene flashed back to her, and once more the ache of
uncertainty and remorse were poignant in her heart. She recalled
Katherine's joyous shout that they were unharmed, and then--and then her
own rush back to the window and the song they had sung just for her!
"You heard?" he was asking in pleasant interest. "Which house are you
in?"
"Oh," cried Peggy in consternation. "The other one."
And then she realized by his puzzled expression and his mouth twitching
into a laugh that her reply didn't make sense. "I mean I didn't hear
it," she rushed headlong into the fib in her distress. "I didn't and my
rose-tree is still all safe in its jardiniere in my room,
and--and--anyway you must realize that it was an accident!" she finished
desperately.
The boy's hand went swiftly into an inner pocket and drew out of a small
envelope a tiny withered rose bud, quite browned and crumply. He held it
silently over to her across the table, his eyes shining with delight.
She looked at it with an attempt at impersonal curiosity, and then the
corners of her mouth crinkled up, and that flickering dimple came into
play and she met his eyes with enjoyment as keen as his own.
"And you all sang to me," she reminded, "and I never was so excited
before."
"Every one of us kept one of the flowers," he told her. "We didn't know
who dropped them to us, we could only see just the fluff of your light
hair--but we carry them just for luck. They are sort of insignia of
adventure--"
"I was so afraid I'd killed you," Peggy confessed, "and I thought the
only thing I could do to atone would be to go and be a Red Cross nurse,
and help those that other people tried to kill."
The young man threw back his head and laughed until the boys at the
other tables looked over and grinned in sympathy.
Peggy hastily turned her attention to her soup and ate in silence.
When they had finished their hot chocolate, too, she glanced out at the
uninviting storm and sighed.
"It must be miles back to Andrews," she said. "I suppose we'd better
start. The storm makes it awfully dark, doesn't it?"
The lights had been turned on in the little tea house and in contrast to
their radiant cheer and that of the dancing flames in the fireplace, the
outside world with its deep gray swirl of snow flakes looked very black
and chill.
"It's not so much the storm--or not that only,--it must be five o'clock,
anyway, you know."
Peggy jumped. "Oh, no, how _could_ it be? We won't get home in time,
then."
"In time?"
"Yes, every girl has to be in her room at five-thirty so as to have
plenty of time to dress for dinner at six. And the rule is partly to
make it certain that we'll be in before it's very dark, too, I suppose."
"Well, we'll make a dive for it," he said. He drew out his watch, and
then his face grew red with that same brilliant over-color that it had
worn when she first saw him out there in the whipping winds. This time
it was not the wind that had sent that flame over his forehead, chin and
cheeks,--it was shame that his sense of responsibility should not have
warned him of the passing time.
"It's--half-past five _now_," he was obliged to tell her.
Peggy looked into his poor, miserable face, full of self-accusation, and
with an effort of will she drew her own lips into their best smile.
"Oh, well," she said, "we've had a gorgeous time, and a few short hours
ago I didn't expect ever to see another half-past five in all this
world. I guess having one's life saved will be sufficient cause for
delay to appease Mrs. Forest. I imagine even _she_ can get the
importance of that."
But in her heart she knew just about how easy it was to explain things
to Mrs. Forest--about as easy as moving a mountain. Once the principal
decided in favor of punishment, not all the king's horses or all the
king's men could change her mind. And, oddly enough, it was the small
faults that she scored most heavily. Peggy sometimes felt that a girl
might steal something and yet not arouse Mrs. Forest's wrath as
thoroughly as one who was late to dinner.
"You are to be trained in _manners_ in my school," she often said, and
it was true that with her these seemed to come before everything else.
She was not so strict in regard to chaperonage and all that as the New
York finishing schools; she had no need to be. The school was situated
in a small and desirable town, and among her pupils were none of the
vapid little Miss Foolishnesses sometimes sent away to school because
their parents or guardians can't manage them at home. All her students
were bright, eager, typical American girls like Peggy and Katherine and
Florence, most of whom had a definite idea and plan for their lives
after graduation, the majority trending collegeward. So, although Peggy
was the youngest girl who would receive a diploma next June, it would
not be on the score of lack of chaperonage in going to tea with a young
Amherst friend that she would meet with Mrs. Forest's objection, but
merely on the technical ground of not returning at the exactly appointed
time.
Hastily he shook out her sweater and held it for her, then flung into
his own, and jammed his cap on his head, and catching up the puppy that
all this while had been lying comfortably before the fire he held the
door open for her. The storm blew in to meet them as they stood there,
and with a shiver of determination they strapped on their snow-shoes and
struck out. "We'll just go over to the next corner, where we can get a
street car--we're only a little way from Andrews by car line," the boy
told her.
They were fortunate enough to catch a car at once, and all unconscious
of the friendly stares of the passengers they congratulated each other
on having left the tea room at exactly the right moment.
The car stopped directly in front of the Andrews gate. Their cheeks were
aglow and their minds full of the afternoon's adventures rather than
with their consequences. On the wide porch Peggy turned to her friend
and said, "You must go, now, and be introduced to Mrs. Forest at some
other time. They're at dinner now, and she'd kill me with her own hands
if I call her away. So I'll let you go and just say, 'Thank you, and
I've had a nice time'--"
She smiled up at him bravely, for presentiments of her meeting with the
Forest were already beginning to creep into her heart.
"Good-by," he said, and in a moment more he was swinging down the walk
and Peggy softly opened the door and scurried upstairs to her room. As
always happens at a time like that, the gay roar of voices in the
dining-room died down as she came in, and to everyone and certainly to
Mrs. Forest the slight sound of her moccasined feet on the stairs was
plainly audible.
When she came down a few minutes later, glowing in a pink evening dress,
Mrs. Forest's stare was like a cluster of icicles.
"No supper for Miss Parsons," she sent word by the maid, and after
Peggy, mighty glad that she had just had plenty of hot soup and
chocolate, had gone back to her room amid the sympathetic glances of the
dining-room full of girls, the principal called that dread and clammily
unpleasant thing known to boarding schools as a "house-meeting."
She herself presided, and the meeting was seldom called for any good,
you may believe. Its object was rather the punishment of someone with
all the sickening stages of a public investigation into her conduct
first. Mrs. Forest had a way of making the girls cry in a homesick
fashion at these affairs and perhaps it is hardly doing her an injustice
to say that she enjoyed it. At least the girls were all perfectly
convinced that it was her sport in life, and they resented particularly
that their idol, Peggy, should be the subject of this one.
A deputation of girls went clattering up after the victim and brought
her down, showing no further marks of perturbation than a tiny little
line of uncertainty in her forehead.
"Sit here, Miss Parsons," commanded Mrs. Forest as soon as all the girls
had gathered.
Peggy sank gracefully into a chair and thrust out her pink satin
slippers daintily. Mrs. Forest could not know how those tired little
feet ached inside those bright slippers.
"Young ladies, I have called this meeting in order that I may have it
understood that in my school the rules are to be obeyed. Now I want to
ask each one of you what you think the rules are for? Do you think they
were made with the idea of having them obeyed? Miss Thomas, will you
answer first?"
Florence felt like the most complete traitor to Peggy that she should
even be questioned on such a subject when she knew the whole proceeding
was aimed at her friend.
"I--don't--know--" she said miserably.
"Don't know," Mrs. Forest smiled disagreeably, "I will ask Miss Parsons
what she thinks."
Peggy looked up from her contemplation of the carpet and gave a little
gasp.
"Oh, I'm not in a frame of mind to think they're very important one way
or another," she replied, with an entirely maddening smile of
deprecation. Her dimple flashed in and out of her cheek and she met Mrs.
Forest's gaze with an unperturbed calm.
"Your penalty for feeling that way--and acting as you feel is that you
shall not be taken to Annapolis in the spring when all the other girls
are going!" Mrs. Forest exclaimed with heat. "Does that make a
difference in your attitude?"
"No," said Peggy, "for most of this afternoon I never expected to go to
Annapolis anyway--or anywhere else in the world again."
The girls caught the under note of earnestness in her voice and leaned
forward interestedly, excitement beginning to shine in their questioning
eyes.
"I was paralyzed back there in the snow when the storm came up," she
went on, a bit of the weariness that was in every limb showing forth in
her voice, "I gave up expecting to come back. And then a man saved me.
Never mind about Annapolis. I'm more than satisfied just as it is."
"Were you in danger from the storm, Peggy?" asked Katherine. "I was
scared to pieces when I saw it coming up, but I didn't want to start a
search party--and someway I thought you couldn't really get lost--we
know all the places around here so well."
"But I couldn't see them," said Peggy, "and I got blown away every time
I tried to turn in a new direction. A man saved me and--got me some hot
chocolate, and--and I've been late to dinner before and all this fuss
wasn't made over it."
"That's just the point," snapped Mrs. Forest, "you have been treated
with too great lenience. If you had thought more of getting home on time
you wouldn't have stopped for the hot chocolate. At least that part
wasn't necessary."
"Oh, but it rather was," Peggy began, but looking at Mrs. Forest she
wondered how she could be expected to understand. Could she ever have
been a girl on snow-shoes, and have known the cold that gleamed in the
frosty air and the hunger that comes after great exertion? No, what was
the use of looking for understanding there? Peggy lightly tapped the
floor with her foot.
"You may go," Mrs. Forest graciously permitted at this point, "I'm
sorry, Miss Parsons," she so far unbent as to say at parting, "that you
thought you were lost and had a fright, but discipline above all
things--discipline, my dear. Perhaps after this we shan't have to combat
your continual tardiness."
In their own room a while later Peggy threw her arms around her
room-mate's neck and danced her this way and that, in a manner quite out
of keeping with the tiredness that she felt.
"The greatest adventures, Katherinekins," she shouted. "Oh, listen,
listen, I can hardly wait to tell you."
On releasing her friend, she proceeded to prepare for bed, saying she
was too exhausted to sit up another minute. But she talked as she
slipped on her kimono and folded back the couch cover from the cot bed
on her side of the room.
"And, Katherine," she came to the wonderful part at last, "who do you
suppose he was? One of the people we tried to kill with our
rose-tree--yes, he had our rose--"
"Rose-tree?" cried Katherine, and then her face, growing whiter and
whiter in its excitement, she clasped her hands together and screamed
out: "The fortune teller, the fortune teller! She spoke of that--quick,
Peggy, hurry, what's his name--is one of his initials H? Peggy, don't
keep me in suspense a minute longer--what is his name?"
Peggy was sitting up in bed with a queer expression in her face. As
Katherine finished she looked across at her with a blank expression.
"Why, I don't know his name!" she cried.