HOME AGAIN
“LOOK! Look! Just look there, Dadah!” cried Mary Jane the second morning later as their train dashed through the familiar woods and fields of their own state. “Look what it’s doing!”
The weather was indeed trying to give the returning travelers a frosty welcome. The fields were white with snow and great sheets of driving snowflakes piled up on the car window sill. The girls dressed in a hurry and went to the back platform to see the sight better. But they didn’t stay long! Not out there! The cold wind sent them scurrying into the warm car in a jiffy.
The train was late because of the storm, connections were bad in the city near their home town and the ride over home was slow and cold. So it was a rather weary and half frozen set of travelers who stiffly got off the traction line a couple of blocks from their own house.
“Ugh!” said Mrs. Merrill shivering, “I always like to come home, but I’ll declare I almost dread the next hour. The house will be clammy cold and it will take a while to get the furnace going and there won’t be a thing to eat.”
Mr. Merrill didn’t reply with his usual sympathy. He merely picked up the bag and walked off up the street—nobody guessed that he had to hurry off to keep the twinkle in his eye from being seen! Alice was glad to let him carry her bag too—her hands, used for some days to the summer heat, were cold and stiff; she could hardly manage a little swing of her arms when her mother suggested run and exercise to warm her up.
Mary Jane, hoping Doris might be at a window, had run ahead, but the snow laden hedge made it impossible to see the house.
But when they turned past the hedge at their own gateway, every one stopped still in amazement—all but Mr. Merrill, that is! Smoke was coming from both the chimneys of their own pretty home; the gleam of a fire in the living room fireplace showed from the front windows, and Amanda swung open the front door.
“I see de limited a-goin’ by,” she exclaimed, with a welcoming grin, “and I jes’ seys to myself ‘there’s my folks!’ So I run and put the kettle on! Come right in and I’ll have yo’ a cup o’ tea in a jiffy!”