“Wowkle, serve the coffee!” again she called.
Immediately, Wowkle emerged from the cupboard, took the coffee-pot from the fire and filled the cups that had been kept warm on the fireplace base, and after placing a cup beside each plate she squatted down before the fire in watchful silence.
“But when it’s very cold up here, cold, and it snows?” queried Johnson, his admiration for the plucky, quaint little figure before him growing by leaps and bounds.
“Oh, the boys come up an’ digs me out o’ my front door like—like—” She paused, her sunny laugh rippling out at the recollection of it all, and Johnson noted the two delightful dimples in her rounded cheeks. Indeed, she had never appeared prettier to him than when displaying her two rows of perfect, dazzling teeth, which was the case every time that she laughed.
“—like a little rabbit, eh?” he supplemented, joining in the laugh.
She nodded eagerly.
“I get digged out near every day when the mine’s shet down an’ Academy opens,” went on the Girl in the same happy strain, her big blue eyes dancing with merriment.
Johnson looked at her wonderingly; he questioned.
“Academy? Here? Why, who teaches in your Academy?”
“Me—I’m her—I’m teacher,” she told him with not a little show of pride.