There was not so great a difference after all, Teeny-bits said to himself, between this Christmas and other Christmases; though the surroundings were different, the same genial, kindly spirit brooded over this luxurious home in Dellsport as always brooded at Christmas time over the humble home in Hamilton. He could shut his eyes and imagine that Ma and Pa Holbrook were in the room taking it all in and looking about them with beaming faces.
And then it was all over. On the morning after Christmas Major-General Durant went back to Washington and Mrs. Durant and Sylvia went with him to spend the rest of the holidays in the Capitol City.
Neil and Teeny-bits, having seen them off, prepared to start northward to the Norris place in the Whiteface Mountains. Teeny-bits felt none too glad to leave the Durant home; those six days had been filled to overflowing with happiness.
"You're coming again," Sylvia had said, and when Teeny-bits had replied, "I hope so," she had added, "Why, of course you are. Every one wants you to."
It was a four-hour run by train to Sheridan and an hour by sleigh to the Norris cabin at Pocassett, a little settlement of camps and cottages at the foot of the Whiteface range of mountains. In the early afternoon Neil and Teeny-bits had arrived in the snow-covered country and were receiving the greetings of their Jefferson School friends. Ted Norris had driven down to the station to meet them in a two-seated sleigh and had brought with him Whipple, whom both Teeny-bits and Neil remembered as the Jefferson punter.
"How do you fellows feel—pretty husky?" asked Norris as they were going back toward the mountains. "Some of the crowd up at the camp want to tramp over the range on snowshoes to-night if it's clear and I didn't know but what we'd join them."
"That sounds good to me," declared Neil. "Teeny-bits and I have been leading the social life down in Dellsport and we're all fed up with parties and so on."
"Sounds good to me, too," said Teeny-bits, although he had to admit to himself that he wasn't exactly "fed up" with the good time in Dellsport.
The Norris place was a cabin built of spruce logs with an immense stone fireplace at one end of a long living room,—a comfortable backwoods place where one felt very close to the out-of-doors. Here the new arrivals found awaiting them Phillips, another member of the Jefferson eleven, and an athletic looking middle-aged man whom Norris introduced as his uncle, Wolcott Norris. There was no one else at the cabin except Peter Kearns, the cook and helper.
"It's all fixed up for to-night," said the older Norris; "we're going up the gulf and over the shoulder of Whiteface and then down to the Cliff House, where a sleigh will meet us and bring us back."