"I don't see how we're ever going to get home!" cried one of the girls who lived at the greatest distance.
Farmer Poole had thought of that. He had routed out his men again, and they harnessed the horses to a big pung and to two smaller sleighs.
Into these vehicles piled both boys and girls who lived on the other side of Milton. A few private equipages arrived for some of the young folk. The fathers of some had tramped through the snow to the farmhouse to make sure that their daughters were properly escorted home in the fast quickening storm.
To look out of doors, it seemed a perfect wall of falling snow that the lamplight streamed out upon. Fortunately it was not very cold, nor did the wind blow. But at the corner of the house there was a drift as deep as Neale O'Neil's knees.
"But we'll pull through all right, girls, if you want to try it," he assured Ruth and Agnes.
They did not like to wait until the sledges got back; that might not be for an hour. And even then the vehicles would be overcrowded. "Come on!" said Agnes. "Let's risk it, Ruth."
"I don't know but that we'd better——"
"Pshaw! Neale will get us through. He knows a shortcut—so he says."
"Of course we can trust Neale," said the older Corner House girl, smiling, and she made no further objection.
They had already bidden their hostess and her father and mother good-night. So when the trio set off toward town nobody saw them start. They took the lane beside the barn and went right down the hill, between the stone fences, now more than half hidden by the snow.