"Ain't neither!" growled the boy, wiping his rough coat sleeve across his eyes. "Snow's blowed in 'em."
"That's more than snow, Marty," was Janice's confident remark.
"Huh!" snorted Marty. "Girls allus know so much!"
He seemed to have suddenly acquired "a grouch." So Janice went cheerily about the room, singing softly to herself, and lighting the lamps. Nobody else had arrived, for it was still early in the evening.
Marty stole softly to the stove. The fire had been banked, and the room was quite chilly. He rattled the dampers, opened them, and then, with a side glance at his cousin, pulled the paper from within the breast of his jacket and thrust it in upon the black coals before he closed the stove door.
"Where's the New York paper, Marty?" Janice was asking, as she arranged the Montpelier and the Albany papers on their files.
"Didn't come," grunted Marty, and picked up the empty coal hod. "I got to git some coal," he added, and dashed outside into the snow.
Instantly the girl hastened across the room. She jerked the stove door open. There lay the folded paper, just beginning to brown in the heat of the generating gas. She snatched it from the fire and, hearing the outer door opened again, thrust the paper inside her blouse.
It wasn't Marty, but was one of the other boys. She did not understand why her cousin should have told her an untruth about the New York paper. But she did not want an open rupture with him here and now—and before other people.
"I'm going right home," she said to Marty, when he came back with the replenished coal hod. "It's snowing real hard."