It was not more than a ten minutes’ walk to her home in good weather, and Edna at last thought she would venture. She pulled her hat down over her ears and her coat collar up around her neck and started. It was desperate walking here in the country where the sharp wind seemed to search out every unprotected part of the body. The snow nearly blinded her, and cut her face like a knife. Every little while she had to stop to get breath, and as she found the difficulties increasing she thought of all the stories she had heard of persons perishing in the snow a few yards from their own door-ways. “I wish I had gone back to Uncle Justus,” she murmured. “Oh, dear, I don’t believe I will ever get there.”
The whiteness of the snow made it possible for her to see a little of the way when she first started, but as she went on and it grew darker she began to wonder if she were in the road. She brushed away the stinging flakes and looked around, peering into the darkness gathering around her. Through the blinding, hurrying flakes she could see twinkling lights here and there, and presently she located the piece of woods just beyond her own home, but it was far to the left, and she realized that she had turned into a by-road instead of keeping to the main one. The tears began to course down her cheeks when she appreciated how far she was from her own house. “I can never go back,” she sobbed. “I can’t. I am so cold and so tired, I’m afraid I can’t get there. It would never do to stand still,” she realized and presently she made up her mind to struggle on toward the nearest light a little ahead.
She bowed her head again and pressed on through the drifts, feeling her strength would do no more than get her to this refuge. At last it was reached, a little house, by the wayside, a tiny garden in front and a small cow-shed behind. Managing to get the gate open, Edna went upon the porch and knocked at the door.
It was opened by a little girl about her own age. “Why,” she exclaimed, “who is it? I thought you were mother. Come right in out of the storm. Isn’t it a dreadful one?”
Edna, scarce able to speak, tottered into the room, warm from a bright fire in a base-burner stove and cheerful by reason of a lighted lamp.
“You are all covered with snow,” the little girl went on. “Do come to the fire and take off your hat and coat. You must be nearly frozen and I expect your feet are wet and cold. I’ll take off your shoes.”
She stooped down and began to unfasten the snowy shoes after removing the rubbers Edna had been fortunate enough to have put on.
In a moment the wanderer was able to tell her story, and to thank her little hostess for her attentions. “I don’t know what I am going to do,” she said. “I’m afraid I can’t get home, and there isn’t any way to send them word to come for me. Of course they will think I have stayed in the city. If I had known how bad the storm was going to be I would never have started, but I did want to see my mother.”
“And I want to see my mother,” replied her hostess. “She went down the road this morning to see my aunt who is ill, and she was coming back on this train that got in a little while ago, the train you must have come on.”
“I didn’t see anyone get off,” Edna told her, “only two or three men who got into a wagon and drove off before I left the station. Most everyone I know comes out on the train before that, but I missed it, you see.”