She could not be too melancholy on such a night as this, however. It was perfectly quiet, and the arch of the sky was like black velvet pricked out with gold and silver stars. Their soft radiance shed some light upon the pond, enough, at least, to show the girl chums the way before them as they skimmed on toward Powerton Landing.
They had left a noisy crowd of boys behind them, near the stamp Factory, mostly mill boys, and the like. Bess had been taught at home to shrink from association with the mill people and that is why she had urged Nan to take this long skate up the pond. Around the Tillbury end of it they were always falling in with little groups of mill boys and girls whom Bess did not care to meet.
There was another reason this evening for keeping away from the stamp factory, too. The manager of that big shop had hired a gang of ice cutters a few days before, and had filled his own private icehouse. The men had cut out a roughly outlined square of the thick ice, sawed it into cakes, and poled it to shore and so to the sleds and the manager's icehouse.
It was not a large opening in the ice; but even if the frost continued, it would be several days before the new ice would form thickly enough to bear again over that spot.
Elsewhere, however, the ice was strong, for all the cutting for the big icehouses had been done long before near the Landing. The lights of Powerton Landing were twinkling ahead of them as the two friends swept on up the long lake. The wind was in their faces, such wind as there was, and the air was keen and nippy.
The action of skating, however, kept Nan and Bess warm. Bess in her furs and Nan in her warm tam-o'-shanter and the muffler Momsey had knitted with her own hands, did not mind the cold.
The evening train shrieked out of the gap and across the long trestle just beyond the landing, where it halted for a few seconds for passengers to embark or to leave the cars. This train was from Chicago, and on Monday Papa Sherwood expected to go to that big city to work.
The thought gave Nan a feeling of depression. The little family in the Amity street cottage had never been separated for more than a day since she could remember. It was going to be hard on Momsey, with Papa Sherwood away and Nan in school all day. How were they going to get along without Papa Sherwood coming home to supper, and doing the hard chores?
Bess awoke her chum from these dreams. “Dear me, Nan! Have you lost your tongue all of a sudden? Do say something, or do something.”
“Let's race the train down the pond to Tillbury,” proposed Nan instantly.