“I’ll wait,” he said, “and if you will give me a shovel I’ll make a path to your gate. I reckon you’re right about staying, sissy. I’ve got two little girls of my own and I know I shouldn’t like them to be left alone either one of them.”
Edna hurried through her note which said: “Dear mother, I am with Nettie Black. She lives in the first little house on the side road on the way to the old mill. We are all alone for her mother hasn’t come back. Please send us something to eat if you can, for we have nothing left but rice and milk. There may be eggs in the hen-house, but we can’t get at them. I want to come but I’d better not. Your loving Edna.”
The little note was safely stowed away in Mr. Snyder’s pocket with a promise of sure delivery, and he went off, his horses plunging through the deep drifts up to their middles.
“I think you are just as good as you can be,” said Nettie. “I don’t feel as if I ought to let you stay, but I do hate the idea of being left all alone.”
“I’d want you to stay with me if I were in your place,” returned Edna remembering the G. R. Club. To be sure Nettie did not belong to her school, but she was quite as much one of those “others” to whom one should do as he would be done by.
“It really looks as if something had happened,” remarked Edna. “When we see the path to the gate. I wish he had had time to make one at the back, too.”
It was almost dark and they were about to turn from the window to light the lamp, when ploughing through the deep snow they saw someone coming down the road. They watched him eagerly. Except the milkman he was the first person they had seen that day. “He is coming this way,” said Edna hopefully. “Oh, Nettie, I believe it is Cousin Ben. He has a basket and see how he has taken to the road where Mr. Snyder’s sleigh went along.” She watched for a few minutes longer. “It is Cousin Ben,” she cried joyfully. “He is coming here. Light the lamp, Nettie, while I go let him in.”
She hurried to the door to see Ben stamping off the snow from his feet. “Whewee!” he exclaimed, “but isn’t this a sockdolager? I never saw such a storm? How are you Ande, my honey. Of all things to think of your being this near home and none of us knowing it.”
“Then mother did think I was still at Uncle Justus’s,” said Edna.
“Just what she did. You rung a surprise on the whole of us, I can tell you.”