When the party was complete they bundled into their wraps again and piled into the machines. Mrs. Belding had retired to her own room until the “devastation of the barbarians,” as she called it, was past; but Mammy Jinny straightened up the hall and dining room after the young folk with great cheerfulness.
“Yo’ know how yo’ was yo’self, Miss Annie, w’en yo’ was oberflowin’ wid de sperits ob youth,” she said, soothingly.
“I am sure I never overflowed quite so boisterously,” sighed Mrs. Belding.
“No. Yo’ warn’t one ob de oberflowin’ kind, Miss Annie,” admitted the old black woman. “But Mars’ Chet an’ Miss Laura, and dem friends ob theirs, sartain sure kin kick up a mighty combobberation—yaas’m!”
The wintry wind blew sharply past the crowd of Central High Juniors as the Belding auto and the bigger machine struck a fast pace when once they had cleared the city. There was lots of fun in the autos on the way to the Sitz farm; but they were all glad to tumble out there and crowd into the big kitchen “for a warm.”
The Swiss family were the most hospitable people in the world. Eve’s mother had a great heap of hot cakes ready for them, and there was coffee, too, to drive out the cold.
“We’re going to take Patrick down to the pond with us to keep up the fires while we’re skating,” Eve told Laura. Eve looked very pretty in her skating rig, and she was a splendid skater, too. “Father and Otto are somewhere down in the woods already. This cold weather coming on marks the time for hog killing, and some of the porkers have been running in the woods, fattening on the mast. There is an old mother hog that has gotten quite wild, and has a litter of young ones with her that are hard to catch. They may have to shoot her. So if you hear a gun go off, don’t be alarmed.”
The hired man, who stayed with the Sitzes all the year around, was a comical genius and the boys knew him well. As they started on the walk to the pond, Chet asked him:
“Do you skate yourself, Pat?”
“Sure, and it’s an illegant skater I used to be when I was young,” declared Pat; “barrin’ that I niver had thim murderin’ knives on me feet, but used ter skate on a bit of board down Donnegan’s Hill.”