The large, square library of the Lee home was warm and cheerful on that blustery, blizzardy Saturday afternoon. A log was snapping and crackling on the hearth and a big slate-colored Persian cat on the rug was purring loudly its content. A long lad, half reclining on a window seat, was reading a detective story and making notes surreptitiously now and then. At a wide front window, Merry Lee stood drumming her fingers on the pane and peering out at the whirling snow. A chiming clock announced that the hour was three. “And I told the crowd to be there by two-thirty at the latest.” Although the girl had not really been addressing him, the boy glanced up to remark: “Might as well give up, Sis. Girls wouldn’t venture out in a storm like this; they are like cats. They like to stay in where it’s warm and comfy. Hey, Muff?” The puss, upon hearing its name, opened one sleepy blue eye, looked at the boy lazily and then dozed again.
Suddenly there was a peal of merry laughter. “Oh, Jack,” his sister exclaimed gayly, “do look out of the window. Did you ever before see such a funny procession?”
Jack looked and beheld coming in at the front gate five maidens so covered with snow that it was impossible to tell which was which.
Merry whirled to defy her brother. “Now, sir, you see girls aren’t afraid of a little blizzardly weather. I’m certainly glad they came. I’d burst if I had to keep my secret any longer.”
“Secret?” Jack’s voice held a rising inflection and he looked up with interest, but Merry was on her way to open the front door that Katie, the maid, need not be summoned by the bell.
A gust of wind and a flurry of flakes first entered, then, what a stamping as there was outside on the storm porch.
“Hail! Hail! The gang’s all here!” Merry sang out, but quickly added: “Oh, don’t mind about the snow. Come on in. Katie put matting over the carpet.” Then as she looked from one ruddy, laughing face to another, the hostess exclaimed: “But you aren’t all here. What’s the matter with Rose? Why didn’t she come?” Then before anyone could reply, Merry guessed: “O, I suppose her lady mother was afraid her precious darling would melt or be blown away! I don’t see how Rose ever gets to school in the winter. Her mother coddles her so!”
“Drives, my dear, as you know perfectly well, but it seems that today the snow-plough hasn’t been along Willowbend Lane, and her mother won’t hear to having the horses taken out. Rose tried to call you up, but your ’phone is on the blink, so she called me.” Peg paused for breath, then went on: “She’s simply heart-broken; she said she’d give us all the chocolates we could eat and a nice hot drink if we’d beg, borrow or steal a sleigh somewhere and hold our meeting out there at her house.”
Merry’s face brightened. “Say, that’s a keen idea! I was wondering how I could divulge my secret with Jack hanging around in the library, and I couldn’t turn him out very well, being as it’s about the only warm spot in the house except the kitchen. What’s more, I’m crazy to go for a tramp in this snow storm. Wait till I get on my leggins and overshoes.”
They had not long to wait, for in less than five minutes Merry reappeared from the cloakroom, under the wide, winding stairway, a fur cap hiding her short curls, a fur cloak reaching to her knees and her legs warmly ensconced in leggins of the same soft grey. She opened the door to the library and called to her brother, who was again deeply engrossed in his book: “The ‘cats’ are about to leave. We’ve decided to hold today’s most important meeting of our secret society in the palatial home of the Widow Wright. I am enlightening you as to our destination, Brother dear, so that if we happen to be lost in a snow drift, you will know where to come to dig us out.”