“I shouldn’t think you’d like boarding,” she said irrelevantly.
“I don’t like it particularly, but it gives me more time for my work. I make myself comfortable, I can tell you, for I have my own bed with two splendid mattresses,—my landlady’s are the hardest things you ever felt,—and all my own furniture and knick-knacks. And I have my own tub, and every morning even in dead of winter, I take a cold bath. And I don’t wear corsets—”
“Mariaville,” called the conductor.
“Oh, here we are,” cried Miss Tremont. She made a wild dive for her umbrella and bag, seized Patience by the hand, and rushed up the aisle, followed leisurely by Miss Beale.
The snow was falling heavily. Patience had watched it drift and swirl over the Hudson, and should have liked to give it her undivided attention.
As they left the station they were greeted by a chorus of shrieks: “Have a sleigh? Have a sleigh?”
“What do you think, sister?” asked Miss Tremont, dubiously. “Do you think Patience can walk two miles in this snow? I don’t like to spend money on luxuries that I should give to the Lord.”
“Perhaps the sleigh man needs it,” said Patience, who had no desire to walk two miles in a driving storm.
“We’d better have a sleigh,” said Miss Beale, decidedly. “We will each pay half.”
“But why should you pay half,” said Miss Tremont, in her protesting voice, “when there are three of us?”