"I'll bet Ethel could think of a worse predicament," grinned Appleton. "She'll be a regular sourdough before spring; won't want to come out."
"But I have nothing to wear!"
"Nothing to wear!" scoffed her uncle. "Tell me, please, what in time you women have got packed in those half a dozen trunks, then? It's not grub. I'll bet there's clothes enough in those trunks to last three women fourteen years! Still, if you really get cold, you might ask Bill to lend you a pair of his——"
"Hubert Appleton!" The lumberman glanced at his wife in surprise. "A pair of his moccasins—they'll keep your toes warm."
The girl finished her belated dinner, and throwing a coat over her shoulders stepped out into the clear, crisp air. Immediately in front of the building the wind had swept the ground almost bare of snow, but Ethel gasped with surprise as her eyes sought the other buildings of the camp.
The blacksmith's shop was entirely buried under a huge drift; only one half of the cook-shack roof was visible, and the bunk-house was buried to the eaves. A twenty-foot drift cut off the view of the stables, and the whole crew was busy digging paths and breaking out skidways.
The storm had ceased as suddenly as it had come, and the sun shone with dazzling whiteness upon the mystic, snow-buried world.
In the office she found Bill fully dressed, propped against his pillows, a villainous black pipe between his lips, reading. He laid aside his book and pipe and stretched his arms toward her.
She crossed, blushing, to his side, and for a long time sat with her head resting upon his shoulder, while his great arms held her close against his beating heart.
And under the spell of his presence and his gently murmured words of love, the disquieting fear vanished, and she knew that he was all hers. And she laughed at her fear, and drove it from her in the foolish belief that it could never return.