“I’d have liked a figure or two, ‘to give interest’,” admitted the handbook student. “Of course I can put you in.”
Frances groaned. She always was “put in”,—with frightsome results.
“Hallo!” shouted Austin just then, “here come two jolly figures for me!”
Frances looked, and saw Max Brenton and Betty Turner tramping through the snow at a pace dictated by Betty’s aversion to undue haste. Max lugged a big basket in one hand and a small one in the other, and was trying to keep up his circulation by whistling vigorously. Betty was pensive, and disinclined at the moment for conversation.
As soon as the two pairs of youngsters hailed each other from afar, they began, after the fashion of their age and kind, to rush together as though they had been opposing currents of electricity. They met with a bump and a shock and a great deal of laughter.
“We were just coming to you,” said Betty. “At least, I was. Mamma has some friends staying with her, and this morning each of them gave me something for our Society stores—”
“How kind of them!”
“It was rather decent. So I thought I’d like you to have the things, as it’s Christmas-day; and the servants were fearfully busy, so I just took the basket to bring it myself. Coming up the hill I got so hot and tired, and I just sat down on my basket—”
“And might have been sitting there yet!” ejaculated Max tragically.
“Only Max came and helped me up, and carried the basket. It was nice of him, only he’s always in such a hurry. In the other basket, the little one, he has some nonsense of his own—”