“You consider yourself very smart, I have no doubt, Miss Travers,” said Miss Olaine, sneeringly, “in inventing a specimen of so-called English exactly opposed to the simple language I demanded. You evidently consider that you have been sent here to school to play. We will see what a little extra work will do for you.”
And so Tavia had certain tasks to perform that kept her indoors on the next Saturday half-holiday. That is why Dorothy chanced to set out alone from the school for a long walk.
It was a cold afternoon, and the sun was hidden. There seemed to be a haze over the whole sky. But there was no snow on the ground, and the latter was as hard as iron and rang under her feet.
Jack Frost had fettered the ponds and streams and frozen the earth, in preparation for the snow that was coming. But Dorothy, not being very weatherwise, did not guess what the atmospheric conditions foretold.
It seemed to her to be a very delightful day for walking, for there was no rough wind, and the paths were so hard. She was only sorry that Tavia was not with her.
It was the apparent peacefulness of the day that tempted her off the highroad into a piece of wood with which she was not very familiar. Indeed, she would better have turned back toward the school at the time she entered the wood, for she had then come a long way.
The path she finally struck into was narrow and winding, and the trees loomed thickly on either hand. Before she realized her position, it was growing dusk and fine snow was sifting down upon her—from the thick branches of the trees, she thought at first.
“But no! that can’t be,” urged Dorothy, suddenly, and aloud. “There hasn’t been any snow for a week, and surely that which fell last would not have lain upon the branches so long. I declare! it’s a storm started. I must get back to Glenwood.”
She turned square around—she was positive she did so—and supposedly took the back track. But there were intersecting paths, and all she could see of the sky overhead was a gray blotch of cloud, out of which the snow sifted faster and faster. She had no idea of the points of the compass.
She went on, and on. “I really must get out of this and reach the road,” Dorothy told herself. “Otherwise I shall be drifting about the woods all night—and it’s altogether too cold to even contemplate that as a possibility.”