“I bet I could do it,” said the Captain.
“Maybe you could, Cicero,” said Hinpoha sweetly. Relations between her and the Captain were somewhat strained these days, but how it began or what it was all about, no one could tell.
The Captain turned angrily at the taunting use of his name. He knew it was meant to imply that he was “Cissy” enough to pass off for a girl. “So you think I’m a Cissy, do you?” he said hotly. If Hinpoha had been a boy there would have been a scuffle right there, but as it was he was helpless.
“Tell them how you trailed the fox up in Ontario, father,” interrupted Aunt Clara hastily, and Uncle Teddy began a thrilling tale of adventure in the backwoods that held them spellbound until they reached their station.
“Now for the long white trail!” cried Uncle Teddy cheerily, when all snowshoes were adjusted to their owners’ satisfaction. “Nine o’clock and all’s well! Catertown and dinner at twelve o’clock, ten miles due south as the crow flies! Here, Captain, you be the first pathfinder. Here is a map of the way we are to take. You may be leader until you get us off the track, and then we’ll let one of the girls try her hand. Forward, march!”
Whole new worlds lie before the hiker on snowshoes. All the ugliness in Nature is concealed by the soft white mantle of snow, like a scratched and stained old table covered with a spotless cloth, and everything is glistening and wonderful and beautiful. The snowshoes are seven league boots in very truth. On them you go right over stumps and fences and hummocks and stones and little hollows. You do not need to keep to the road or to the beaten track. Dame Frost, like Sir Walter Raleigh, has spread her mantle over the unpleasant places and over it you may pass in safety.
“Where are we now?” asked the Bottomless Pitt.
“Casey’s Woods,” replied the Captain, referring to his map.
“Oh,” cried Sahwah, “don’t you remember how we wanted to come here to a picnic once in the summer, but we couldn’t go into the woods at all, because the mosquitoes were just terrible? Why didn’t we ever think of holding a picnic in the winter? There are no ants to crawl into your shoes and no spiders to get into your cocoa.”
“And no poison ivy,” said Gladys. “Why, winter is the very best time to hold a picnic!”