This conveniency, well enough known to-day, was new to us, and we did not quite know how to manage it. However, we got onto the thing somehow, and away we went down the slide. The slide was all right and the inclined plane was all right, so we made the descent and the ascent all right, soaring over the brook like a bird, but the landing on the far side was all wrong. We hit the snowbank like a battering ram, the snow piling up in front of us as hard as stone; the shock was terrific! Mr. Hosmer got the worst of it as he catapulted into the drift, while I alighted in a heap on his shoulders. He scrambled out of the drift on all fours, concerned only with learning whether I was badly hurt. On my assurance that unless his back and legs and arms were broken, there was no damage done, he straightened up and declared he was unhurt but dreadfully humiliated. “How could a man be such a condemned idiot as to plunge head-first against a barricade like that?” This was the question suggested to his mind, only he did not say “condemned idiot” exactly, but he apologized for the emphatic words he did use, and as they do not look well in print, they need not be repeated.
Despite his bluff I saw he was in pain and wanted him to return to the Hive, but he insisted on finishing our job. Under his direction I wallowed through the snowdrift, back and forth, trampling down a passage, and then pressed the snow hard and flat, using the toboggan like a plank. Meanwhile Mr. Hosmer bad turned very white and now dropped onto the toboggan, limp and sick. The shock had upset his digestion. How to get him home? Borrowing rails from the roadside fence I laid them across the streak of open water in the middle of the brook, piled snow over them, and dragged my patient across on the toboggan. I attempted to haul him up the Knoll, but he protested, asserting that he was much better and fully able to walk. He managed to crawl up the hill and left me with directions to find Angus Cameron and join him in taking charge of the slide in the afternoon.
After making half-a-dozen or more flying leaps over the brook on the new conveyance, with as many jolts and tumbles in the snow, I managed to get the hang of the thing, and could steer it over the course with delightful ease, suggesting the flight of a bird.
CHAPTER V.
A GOOD ENDING
Saturday’s dinner dispelled all fears of starvation from Brook Farm’s meager fare, the table being abundantly supplied with boiled beef, vegetables, Graham bread and good, sweet butter like home, and, best of all, baked Indian pudding, a real luxury. Mr. Hosmer did not appear, being confined to his room in the cottage. Learning that Dr. Ripley intended calling there, I asked leave to go with him, and was told to be in the library, which was also the President’s office, at four o’clock.
Not being accustomed to Brook Farm’s quick changes, my little talk with Dr. Ripley made me a few minutes late at the Knoll, where I found two-score or so of children and half as many grown-ups engaged in a snowball scrimmage. Inquiring for Angus, I turned over the toboggan to him for the first ride. He asked if the slide was all right, if I had made the jump over the brook, and if Mr. Hosmer was badly hurt. As he was a little backward about coming forward, so to speak, I took the initiative, inviting any girl to join me who had courage enough to face the music. Urged by my sister Althea, Annie Page took the offered seat, and down the slide we plunged like a shot, all the company watching our venture with intense interest and not a little anxiety. The flight took the breath away, but we sailed over the brook and out to the thin snow on the meadow in one grand swoop, without a bump or a break on the way. Annie was delighted and thanked me, over and over for giving her such a surprising pleasure.
Under the circumstances I thought Althea might be the next girl to make the trip, and, on the way up the hill, I gave the Old Colonie call, which she recognized and answered. Annie noticed the whistle and the reply, and asked what it meant, and when I explained the signal, she said, “I would like to learn that.” I immediately repeated it until she caught the notes, and presently the strain was echoed all over the Knoll, and from that moment it became the call of the school. From that moment, too, Annie Page became the one girl of the place for me. She held that position in my regard until three years later, when she and her sister went to live with their parents in Italy. She was a year and a month and a day younger than myself, but was far my senior in the school. That was an advantage to me, as it had the effect of driving me ahead in my studies in order to reach her classes. We were together a good deal out of school hours, taking the same work to do, when that was practicable, as feeding the rabbits in the warren back of the Eyrie, and cultivating the herb-garden where we raised mint, anise and cummin, sage, marjoram and saffron for the Boston market.
One other incident occurred on the Knoll perhaps worth recording, as it gave me a name. Annie insisted on helping me pull the toboggan up the slide, and, on the way, she remarked, “I did not know boys liked perfumery.”
“That,” said I, “is from the cedar chest our clothes are packed in.”
Just as we reached the group at the top of the hill she answered, “Oh, cedar! So it is.”