The cider man’s wife stood in the doorway now, smiling at them somewhat impatiently.
“Did you come for cider?” she asked. “Well, about ten others have been here before you to-day, on the same errand, but he didn’t make any to-day. And there aren’t any ginger cookies. We didn’t have anything for the other girls, either. I never saw anybody like you college girls—a person feels guilty if he rests one day,—what with you all being hungry and thirsty just the same. I’m real sorry.”
“We—we brought a jug,” said Peggy pathetically.
“Brought a jug? Ernie!” (raising her voice, and calling back into the room where the table was). “They brought a jug.”
Ernie called back something, and a smile flitted across his wife’s face.
“He says if you want to wait till he’s through dinner, he’ll go over and make some,” she interpreted. “We’re very late getting dinner to-day—we’ve had so many interruptions. But if you want to wait———?”
“We’ll wait!” cried Peggy and Katherine in the same breath.
“It will be about an hour,” said the woman, closing the door.
“An hour!” Peggy and Katherine exchanged glances with deep sighs, and trudged down the steps, and slowly back toward the mill.
The cider mill was an important institution to Hampton girls—and to Amherst boys, if they cared to walk so far. The man who owned it seemed to feel an especial responsibility toward college girls—as every one does near a college town—and so he kept a counter in the entrance hall over which he sold as much cider as a girl wanted to drink, for five cents. One of his stalwart young helpers would fill her glass as many times as she wished, for the single first payment.