Father usually read aloud to them on such evenings, and they wouldn’t have missed that for anything. That evening he read a rhymed funny story about a farmer who got blown away from his barn one winter night, and, with his lantern waving, slid two miles down the mountain before he could stop himself. This was a great favorite of theirs and made them laugh harder every time they heard it.
“Sometimes he came with arms outspread
Like wings, revolving in the scene
Upon his longer axis and
With no small dignity of mien.
Faster or slower as he chanced,
Sitting or standing as he chose,
According as he feared to risk
His neck, or thought to spare his clothes.”
And Helen liked the end, too, that Father always brought out with a special accent, the way the farmer didn’t give up. As he started silently and doggedly back the long way around, miles and miles in the cold, she walked along beside him, sharing something of his quiet resistance to Fate. That was the way to do when you’d slid all out of the way you wanted to go!