MRS. WICKS
Polly was the first to wake in the morning. She opened one eye
sleepily, saw her dress hanging over a chair back, caught a glimpse of
unfamiliar wall paper on the side of the room, and sat up with a jerk.
“What’s the matter?” asked Jess, drowsily.
“Oh!” said Polly. “I remember now. We’re here. Say, Jess, it must be
late; the sun is shining.”
“Then it’s stopped snowing,” said Jess. “We can go home. Let’s get
dressed in a jiffy.”
Margy woke up, and it did not take the three girls long to dress, for
they had slept in their underclothes, having removed only their dresses
and stockings.
Polly peeped out into the kitchen and saw Fred pumping water at the
sink.
“Want to wash your face?” he whispered. “Here’s a towel. It’s stopped
snowing, but you ought to see the snow!”
Polly stood on tiptoe to glance out of the window over the sink. The
sun was dazzling, and trees and fences and outbuildings were plastered
with drifts of snow, flung against them by the wind.
“Isn’t it pretty!” cried Polly, in delight.
“It won’t be so pretty to walk home,” said Ward, who joined them.
“Are you children up?” called Mrs. Wicks. “I wish one of you girls
would help me get dressed. My knee isn’t any worse, but then it isn’t
any better.”
“I’ll help her,” offered Margy, hastily. “You build the fire, Fred,
because it’s freezing cold in this kitchen.”
Fred and Artie went out to get more wood, for Fred suggested that they
leave the woodbox untouched, and Margy went to help the old woman get
dressed.
By the time she was ready, the kitchen was warm and Polly and Jess set
the breakfast table, while Mrs. Wicks stirred up griddle cakes and
showed them how to make oatmeal.
“The man on the next farm always brings me milk,” the old lady
explained, “and it shows how deep the snow must be, if he can’t get
here. It’s lucky I have some milk left from yesterday.”
They had a cheerful breakfast, and when it was over Polly asked if
there wasn’t something they could do to help.
“We can’t walk home through the snow while it is as deep as this,” she
said sensibly, “and perhaps we can help you, if you’ll tell us how.
What would you do if you weren’t lame this morning?”
“I’d feed my chickens and shovel some paths around the house and down
to the mail-box,” said Mrs. Wicks, promptly. “Then I’d sit down and
sew.”
Fred and Artie and Ward said they could do the outdoor work, and they
went at it with a will. Though before that they found that their shoes
were so stiff it wasn’t easy to get them on. But Mrs. Wicks brought
out some grease and showed them how to rub it in, and that made the
leather pliable again. Fred did the girls’ shoes for them, and Margy
was especially grateful, for she loved to be comfortable and she had
been dreading to put on her stiffened shoes.
The three girls washed and dried the dishes, swept and straightened up
the kitchen, made the beds and watered the geranium that Mrs. Wicks
said couldn’t be killed, for no matter how cold the kitchen was, it
lived, winter after winter, if protected by a paper at night.
“I wish you’d come and live with me all winter,” the old lady said,
when Ward brought in six eggs he had found in the henhouse and Fred and
Artie reported that a path had been swept out to the mail-box. “I like
company. One of my nieces comes to stay with me part of the time, and
she’s coming the day after New Year’s. But she isn’t young like you.”
Fred asked about the barn in which they had stayed, and Mrs. Wicks told
them that the place had once been a prosperous farm.
“The house burned down one summer, and the people farmed it for a time,
living in the barn and using it as a house,” she said. “Then they sold
the place and moved away, and the new owner never did anything with it.
One by one the outbuildings fell to pieces, and they say one good wind
will blow the barn over, if it gets it in the right corner.”
“There’s rats in it!” shuddered Margy. “I was sitting on the floor last
night, waiting for Fred to come back, and a horrid rat ran right across
my lap!”
“She let out a yell that could be heard in River Bend,” said Ward,
grinning. “And then she rushed outdoors and wouldn’t come back. Fred
found her standing in the snow, crying.”
“Well, I’d cry, too, if a rat ran over me,” said Jess, stoutly. “Ugly,
horrid things!”
Mrs. Wicks got out her box of patchwork and showed the gay-colored
patches to her visitors. Like many lonely old ladies, she was fond of
telling stories about her girlhood, and with a brand new audience the
temptation was too great to be resisted.
“You girls don’t sew patchwork nowadays, do you?” she asked, smiling.
“We can knit,” offered Polly, apologetically. “But none of us ever made
a quilt. My grandmother did, when she was a little girl, though.”
“Ward speaking of the rat that frightened Margy, reminded me of a scare
I had when I was a little girl,” said Mrs. Wicks.
“I had gone to visit my Aunt Deborah, of whom I was very fond. Aunt had
a son, about sixteen--I was then eleven--and, dear me, what a tease
Coburn was! He called me ‘Miss Prim’ and pulled my hair whenever he had
a chance. I was supposed to sew on my patchwork every afternoon, even
when visiting, and Coburn thought that a girl cousin who spent hours
sewing wasn’t much fun to have around. He would have liked me to be a
boy cousin and climb trees with him.”
“But we girls climb trees!” put in Jess. But Mrs. Wicks paid no
attention to the remark, and went on with her story.
“Well, I was sitting quietly with my little sewing basket one
afternoon, in the parlor window. Aunt Deborah kept the parlor tightly
closed most of the time, and there must have been some special reason
why I was allowed to sit there and sew, but I don’t recall it. Perhaps
because I was company. The parlor window overlooked the road, and,
girl-like, I was interested in the various teams that drove past. I
liked to see what people were doing as much as any one. Coburn wasn’t
anywhere around, and Aunt Deborah was still upstairs finishing her nap.
“A spic and span, shiny new buggy went past with a girl dressed in
white driving, and I leaned forward to look, at the same time putting
out my hand to take a spool of thread from the basket. I felt something
move under my hand, but I thought it was the spool of thread rolling
from my fingers. Unconsciously I took a firmer clutch, and something
squeaked. I had picked up a little white mouse!”
“Ugh! How awful! Didn’t you scream?” asked Margy.
“Scream! I should think I did!” returned Mrs. Wicks, smiling at the
recollection. “To my startled eyes that basket seemed alive with white
mice, and I threw it across the room in one direction and my patchwork
and thimble in another. Then I fled, still screaming.
“Aunt Deborah came downstairs on the run, and Coburn mysteriously
appeared from some secret place. He caught me as I came rushing out of
the door and, with some difficulty, calmed me. I think he was a little
frightened, for I couldn’t stop crying at first and nothing would
induce me to go into the parlor or touch my work basket again. Aunt
Deborah made Coburn pick up the scattered spools and put the basket
in order. As for his three pet mice, no one ever knew what became of
them--they may have run off to live with their relations. Anyway, they
never came back and Aunt Deborah declared it served Coburn right for
playing such a trick.”
Margy said that she thought mice were the worst animals that ever
lived, except rats, while Fred contended that mice were all right when
you knew them. This started an argument that lasted till Mrs. Wicks
suggested they go down to the mail-box and see if the postman had got
through the drifts.
“If we’d only brought our sleds, instead of the skates, we could get
home,” said Ward.
“But it wasn’t snowing when we left,” said Polly. “Oh, dear, I do hope
the folks aren’t worrying about us.”
“If we had some snowshoes, we could walk home, on top of the snow,”
said Artie. “Why couldn’t we make some?”
“Out of what?” asked Fred, promptly.
“Barrel staves,” replied Artie.
“I think stilts would be better,” declared Ward. “Stilts would hold us
up, out of the drifts.”
“Snowshoes are what we need,” decreed Fred. “Perhaps we could make them
out of barrels. Let’s see if Mrs. Wicks has any barrels she doesn’t
want.”
“Barrels?” said Mrs. Wicks, when they asked her. “Oh, my, yes! plenty
of barrels out in the woodshed. Do anything you like with them.”
With the three girls as interested, if not hopeful, spectators (Polly
was sure she couldn’t walk on snowshoes after they were made and
Margy said frankly she didn’t think they would ever be made) the boys
ripped two barrels apart and sandpapered the staves. The sandpaper was
worn pretty smooth--it was all Mrs. Wicks had--and the staves were
remarkably rough, but they did the best they could.
“You try them first, Fred,” suggested Artie. “How are you going to keep
these snowshoes on?”
“Skate straps,” said Fred, briefly.
He managed to strap a stave to each of his feet, using his skate
straps, and then, slowly and gingerly, stepped out of the woodshed.
“The way to walk on snowshoes,” he announced, “is not to lift your feet
and put ’em down again. You glide along.”
“All right, let’s see you glide,” said Artie, eagerly.
Fred struck out with what he fondly believed to be a gliding motion. He
sunk one foot deeply into the snow, balanced there a precarious moment
with his other foot waving wildly in the air and then crashed over into
a handy drift.
“Of course there’s a knack in getting used to them,” he gasped, as the
others pulled him out. “I’ll get it after a while.”
“Well, if I have to walk on those things to get home, I’m going to stay
here,” said Jess.
“There’s the postman!” cried Margy. “Look, he’s putting something in
the box!”
They ran down the path they had shoveled, Fred discarding his
“snowshoes” as hindrances, and found the postman to be a jolly person
wrapped in many mufflers and driving a large white horse harnessed to
an old-fashioned sleigh.
“Say, there’s some one looking for you kids,” he said, as soon as
he saw the children. “I met a team about a mile back, two men in a
sleigh. They asked me if I’d seen anything of three boys and three
girls. And then I hadn’t, and told them so.”
“Daddy!” cried Polly. “It must be Daddy and Mr. Larue. Whereabouts did
you see them?”
“They were following this road,” said the postman. “Looks like them
coming now. I’ve had to make so many stops I guess they’ve caught up
with me. Yes, they’re waving to you. See ’em?”