“They must know that we keep the Fire Law,” answered Hinpoha. “‘Whose house is bare and dark and cold, whose house is cold, this is his own’!”
“Isn’t it strange that she came to our door, and not to the boys’,” said Gladys. “They had a light shining, too, but her footprints show that she came past their door to stop at ours.”
“That’s because she was a lady,” replied Uncle Teddy, helping himself to his fifth slice of fried bacon, “and no lady would come bustling into a gentleman’s apartment like that. Hurry up and get your chores done, you housekeepers and wood-gatherers, and let’s go out and make a snow man.”
“Let’s make a totem-pole,” suggested Katherine, when they were all out playing in the snow. “It’s lots more epic than making a snow man.”
“You mean a ‘snowtem pole,’” observed Uncle Teddy.
So they set to work and made a marvellous totem-pole, higher than the cabin, with figures carved into its sides such as were never on land or sea. Then Uncle Teddy and the boys, who had done less carving on their sections and consequently were finished first, set up a barber pole on the other side of the doorway, containing the stripes with a crimson of their own concocting, which was a secret, but which involved several trips to the kitchen and the food supply box. All this time the Captain had never spoken one word to Hinpoha. Whenever he would have relented under the spell of the jolly larks they were having, something whispered to him, “She called me Cicero! I won’t stand that from anyone!”
“Who’s ripe for a trifling sprint of five miles this afternoon?” asked Uncle Teddy at the dinner table, taking three scones at once from the plate.
“I! I! I!” cried a chorus of voices, and a dozen hands waved frantically above the table.
“Have you any special place in mind?” asked Aunt Clara, pretending not to see Uncle Teddy stealing yet another buttered scone from her plate.
“Well,” said Uncle Teddy, “I happen to know that there’s a real sugar camp in action somewhere about here, and I think five miles covers it, there and back. It might not be the worst idea in the world to look in and see how they are getting on. I dare say most of these folks here have never seen maple syrup outside of a can.”