“She sat with one leg crossed over the other,” went on the reminiscent lady, “a-swinging of her foot for hours at a time. If I was naughty I had to come up to her and squat a-straddle of that foot. If I rested any weight on her foot, Marcy would rap me on the head with her thimble.”
“Oh! how cruel!” burst out Janice.
“Mebbe it was good for the back and limbs,” sighed Aunt ’Mira; “but it was awful tryin’. We’d hafter stay in that stoopin’ position until sometimes we’d fall right over on the floor. And my poor head! It was sore all over from Marcy Coe’s thimble, until I fairly squalled at night when my mother combed my hair. She thought ’twas snarls, poor dear.”
Aunt ’Mira chanced to look up and see the snow beating against the windows. It drew a perfect curtain between the warm sitting-room and the general outlook. The wind had risen, too, and was grumbling in the deep-throated chimney and rattling the outside blinds.
“My goodness, Janice!” her aunt exclaimed, “this is a hard storm. Where can your Uncle Jason and Marty be? They’d ought to be home early to do the chores. If this keeps up they won’t git to the critters at all to-night.”
“I can run out and feed the live stock and shut the hen-house door, Aunt ’Mira,” offered the girl, getting up briskly. “All they will have to do when they come home, then, will be to milk.”
“Wal, if you will,” agreed her aunt. “And I’ll be gettin’ a hot supper. They’ll want it—’specially Jason—after trampin’ through this snow.”
Janice put on a short coat, her leggings and mittens, and ventured out. The back porch was half full of snow, heaped to her waist.
“I never did see it snow so hard and so fast before,” thought the girl, facing the storm.
As she went past the tool shed she bethought her and secured a shovel. And it was well she did so, for when she reached the small stable door, the snow was heaped so high against it that she had difficulty in digging her way in.