"Mercy!" gulped Henrietta, "it's blowing my skin off."
After that, no one had very much to say. The girls needed their breath for other purposes. With heads down and jackets pulled tightly about them, they started up the long hill with the wind in their faces. It was not a pleasant wind. Cold and cutting, it flung icy particles of snow against their cheeks, nipped their unprotected ears, stung their fingers and found the thin places in their garments. It rushed down their throats when they opened their mouths to speak, wrapped their petticoats so tightly about them that they had to keep unwinding themselves in order to walk at all, heaped the whirling snow in drifts and filled the air so full of flakes that it was only between gusts that the houses were visible. Worst of all, the way was very much uphill, and Mabel, besides being short of breath, was burdened with the basket of eggs. The snow seemed to take a delight in piling itself directly in front of them.
"Ugh!" gasped Henrietta, "I wish my stockings were fur-lined. They thawed out in Mrs. Malony's and now they're frozen stiff. I don't like 'em."
"Mine, too," panted Mabel.
"And all my skirts," groaned Marjory. "The edges are like saws and they're scraping my knees."
"How do you like a real storm?" queried Jean, steering Henrietta through a mighty drift.
"Not so well as I thought I should," admitted Henrietta. "I miss my blizzard clothes."
The streets, when the girls finally reached the top of the hill, were deserted. Even the sides of the houses looked like solid walls of snow, for the wind had hurled the big flakes in gigantic handfuls against the buildings until they were all nicely coated with a thick frosting; and so, all the world was white. And, by the time the five girls reached Jean's house, for they finally accomplished that difficult feat, they, too, were nicely plastered from head to heels with the clinging snow. They looked like animated snow men as they piled thankfully into Mrs. Mapes's parlor.
The girls themselves were warm and glowing from the unusual exercise, but their stockings and cotton skirts were frozen stiff.