“We’ll have to take a chance on that,” Billie returned, adding with an exasperated stamp of her foot, “if you don’t hurry and show us the way, Laura, I’ll do it myself.”
So Laura, knowing that nothing could change Billie’s mind when it was once made up, caught the little boy in her arms and started off across the lake, Billie and Vi following close behind her.
Luckily the children were not heavy, being thin almost to emaciation, or the girls could never have made their goal. As it was, they had to stop several times and set the children down on the ice to rest.
And more than once the treacherous ice cracked under their feet, frightening them horribly. They made it at last, however, and with a sigh of relief set the children on the ground while they fumbled with numbed fingers at their skate straps.
“Is this where you live?” asked Billie of the elder of the two little girls. Billie had undone the last strap buckle and was peering off through the woods in search of some sort of habitation.
“Yes,” answered the little girl through chattering teeth. “Our house is just a little way off, along that path.”
She pointed to a narrow foot path, or rather, to the place where a foot path had once been. For now it was obliterated by snow and was indicated only very faintly by footprints recently made.
Billie, seeing that the other girls were ready, caught up the little girl again, holding her close for warmth and started down the snow-covered path, Laura and Vi following.
The snow was hard, which made the going a little easier, and in a minute or two they came in sight of a shabby cabin set in the heart of a small clearing.
If the place had been a mansion, the girls could not have greeted the sight of it any more joyfully. They stumbled forward recklessly at the imminent risk of dropping the poor little children in the snow.