“And cook some chestnuts,” added Nan. “We’ll pretend we’ve been shipwrecked. Were you ever shipwrecked, Mrs. Bimby?” Nan asked, as cheerfully as she could.
“No, dearie, but I’ve had the rheumatiz, and I reckon that’s ’most as bad. But let’s eat what we’ve got and we’ll hope for more before the day is over.”
“It’s still snowing, isn’t it?” remarked Nan, as she hungrily ate some of the dry food and swallowed some of the weak, but warm, tea.
“Yes, and it’s likely to keep up all day,” said Mrs. Bimby. “It’ll be hip-deep by night, and we’ll be completely snowed in. I declare, I don’t know what we’ll do!”
“Maybe it’ll stop,” suggested Bert, trying to look on the bright side.
“Or maybe it won’t be so bad but what we can go out,” added Nan. “And if we get back to camp we can send you something to eat by one of the men in a sleigh, Mrs. Bimby.”
“I wouldn’t let you go out in this storm—not for anything!” declared the kind old woman. “The only safe place is this cabin when it snows this way. You can’t starve to death as quickly as you can freeze to death, that’s a comfort. And we’ve got enough for one more meal, anyhow.”
But when noon came, after a long morning, during which the Bobbsey twins played more checker games with grains of corn, and when almost all there was in the cupboard had been eaten, Mrs. Bimby opened the doors, looked at the bare shelves and said:
“I declare, I don’t know what we’re going to do! Almost everything is gone!”
The cupboard, indeed, was nearly bare.