“Brazilla, would right after breakfast be too soon to start out to find those two surprises?”
“You’ll have to wear my leggins, I’m thinkin’,” Brazilla declared. “The snow’ll be above your shoe-tops easy and more than that at the drifts.”
An hour later Muriel appeared in the doorway of the large sun-flooded living room and Miss Gordon glanced up at her from the book she was reading.
“Why, Muriel, you look stouter than usual,” was her puzzled comment.
“No wonder,” Rilla laughingly confessed. “I do believe that Brazilla has put on me two layers of everything that she could find, including the leggins and her warm red hood. Jack Frost will have a hard time finding a place to nip. Goodbye, Miss Gordon. I’ll be back by noon. I know that you are going to have a wonderful two hours just resting and reading.” Then she was gone.
“I never knew that one could have so many different kinds of emotions at the same time,” Muriel was thinking as she started down the snowy road that led to the sand dunes where stood the scattered homes of her fisherfolk friends.
A queer looking settlement it was, for each squatter had built his cabin facing in whatever direction his particular fancy had suggested. A few had preferred to face the town and others had their front dooryards on the side toward the sea, but as there were from one hundred to two hundred feet of sand dune between each shack no one interfered with his neighbor.
Muriel purposely went a roundabout way to avoid passing the boarded-up cabin of her Uncle Barney. Tears sprang to her eyes as she thought of him. How she longed to see that dear, faithful old man who had been her grand-dad’s closest friend and comrade through many years, but she would have to wait until spring. Even then she doubted if he would be able to bring his old mother, who was very feeble.
She did not even glance in that direction when she reached the sand dunes, but went at once to the cabin of the Wixons.
She whistled the old familiar call. A short, joyous bark was heard in reply, the cabin door opened and out leaped a dog, grown larger, perhaps; her own beloved Shags! If there had been in her heart a fear that he might have forgotten her, it was soon dispelled. The joy expressed in every move that he made told as plainly as words could have done that here was the one person in all the world whom he loved best. Down on the snow the girl knelt, her arms were about her shaggy friend, her face for a moment hidden in the long, silky hair at his neck. Oh, how hard it was not to sob!