“Aw—well—I s’pose ye will have it!” said the red-head. “Merry Christmas! Nex’ thing, I s’pose ye’ll wanter kiss me like ye do the kids.”
“I promise not to do that, Tom,” said Janice, her eyes dancing, but her face grave, “until you wash your face. Then I might be tempted.”
He grinned sheepishly and then stood and watched her disappear in the curtain of snow that swirled down the broad roadway.
Before she had gone half a mile Janice realized that this was like no other storm she had been out in. The wind shrieked around her, sometimes buffeting her so sorely that she almost lost her footing. It became something of an effort to pull the light sled.
There were not many farms between the wood road and Elder Concannon’s, and every house was back some distance from the road. Janice did not believe she could get lost, thick as the snowfall was, for the highway was fenced on either side. But if she turned off it and attempted to take refuge in one of these dwellings along the way, would she find such refuge? That was a query that troubled her. The risk seemed less if she plodded on, and this she did while the afternoon waned and the storm increased in fury.
She had no idea that she was already the subject of worried inquiry at home. Marty had returned and had begun shoveling the paths.
“More I do now, the less I’ll hafter do in the morning. Plague take the snow, anyway! I jest hate shovelin’ paths,” he complained. “And, by jinks! I dunno but the snow’s fillin’ this one up faster than I kin git it dug. This is an old ripsnorter of a storm, and no mistake. Hullo! who’s this plowin’ up the lane?”
It proved to be Nelson Haley. He had not been to the Day house for several weeks and Marty hailed him with surprise.
“My goodness, Mr. Haley! I thought you’d forgotten the way up here. Ye ain’t lost, be ye?”
“Not at all, Marty, not at all; but I see that you lose all your knowledge of the English language just as soon as you get out of the school building.”