“Get two if you can,” suggested Dorothy. “Then we’ll both get some exercise, and they’ll come in handy while we’re getting through the drifts.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Gretchen. She disappeared through a door in the side of the building.
Dorothy looked about her. Rolling clouds of windswept snowflakes made it impossible to see objects more than a few yards away with any distinctness. The dark shadow of low clouds painted the white of her landscape a cold, dull gray. But she noticed, as she waited, that the storm was driving in gusts, that occasionally there would be a short lull when the sun, tinging the sky with rose and yellow, seemed fighting to break its way through to this white-blanketed world. Then Gretchen, a broom in each hand, joined her.
“Whew! that place was stuffy,” she said, handing one of the brooms to Dorothy, and starting ahead at right angles from the way they had come. “Hanley made a fuss giving me two—he would! It’s a wonder the cars don’t melt in there. He keeps the place like an oven. All the help from the city is like that. They can’t seem to get warm enough, and the way they hate fresh air is a caution! I roomed with Sadie, the other chambermaid, when I first came, and you won’t believe it, but that girl had nailed our window shut so it couldn’t be opened! I spoke to Mr. Tunbridge next morning, and he gave me a room of my own. I always did like Mr. Tunbridge. He’s a real gentleman, he is.”
They forged ahead through the drifts to the crossfire of Gretchen’s light chatter, and Dorothy was given a series of entertaining stories concerning the habits of the Winncote servants and their life below-stairs. It was rough going with the storm in their faces, and Gretchen eventually ceased her gossiping from sheer lack of breath. The ground began to slope gently downward, and finally they came to a belt of trees in a hollow. Fifty yards farther on, a broad expanse of white marked the extent of Winncote Pond beneath its thick, flat quilt of snow.
“Think the ice will hold?” Dorothy walked to the brink of the little lake. “I’d hate to go in on a day like this.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I was down here for an hour yesterday afternoon with my skates before the snow began, and it was much warmer then. The ice was wonderful—slick as glass and solid as a rock.”
By dint of considerable exercise they cleared two narrow paths that ran parallel across the ice. Then they commenced a series of sliding contests, each girl on her own ice track. Starting at a line in the snow a few yards above the low bank, they would race forward to the brink and shoot out on the ice, vying with each other to see who could slide the farthest. There were several tumbles at first, but the deep snow along the sides of the tracks prevented bad bumps. Soon, however, they both became adepts at the sport. Dorothy, aided by her extra weight, for she was at least twenty pounds heavier than little Gretchen, invariably won.
After a half an hour of this rather violent sport, they cleared the snow from a fallen tree trunk and sat down for a rest. Here in the hollow, surrounded by trees, the wind lost a great deal of its force. But the snow continued to fall unabated, and their hot breath clouded like steam in the cold air. Their cheeks were tingling crimson from the racing, and both felt in high good spirits.
“I can’t understand why so many rich people go south every winter,” Gretchen said earnestly. “I wouldn’t miss out on this fun—the snow and the skating, tobogganing—for anything in the world.”