“Don’t be alarmed, my sweet Jessie,” replied Walter, laughing. “I don’t want to touch your sting-nettle of a cousin. I’d about as lief grapple a hedgehog. Let him and his selfish sister have their slides all to themselves. You come with me. I know where there is far better sliding than this, and I came on purpose to tell you so. Come, let us go, and leave them to enjoy their slides, if such selfish creatures can enjoy any thing.”
“Please Walter, let my cousins go with us,” whispered Jessie in Walter’s ear, as he took her hand.
“No, no, Jessie, I can’t consent to that. They won’t be a whit happier there than here, and if we do take them with us, they will only spoil our fun. I never saw two such thorns in my life. You can’t go near them, but they scratch you right off.”
“They are going home, the day after to-morrow, and I’m glad of it,” cried Carrie, as she stepped up the bank after her brother and Jessie.
“So am I,” said Walter, “and I’m thinking there will be plenty of dry eyes at Glen Morris Cottage, when they go away. What do you say to that, Jessie?”
“I’m sorry my cousins are so selfish,” replied Jessie, “but Charlie is the worst. I think if Emily was here without him, she would soon be a good girl.”
“Perhaps so. Yet I’m inclined to think you’ll see apples growing on that old hickory yonder, before she becomes good, as you call it. But let us hurry into the pasture. Here, Jessie, mount these bars?”
As he spoke, Walter leaped over the rail-fence of a pasture, and giving his hand to Jessie, she mounted the top bar.
“Now jump!” cried Walter.
Jessie did as she was told. Carrie followed. Then Walter led them along the pasture, until they struck a bend in the brook where the water having flowed over a flat basin, was very shallow. Along the edge of this basin the water was frozen hard.