During the entire winter at Half Moon Lake had she not been looking forward almost daily to Dan Webster’s visit at Christmas time? Since their parting in France she and Dan had written each other occasionally, but neither of them wrote especially well, so that the letters were not very satisfactory.
Well, Dan had arrived and so far they had exchanged exactly eight words, the self-same words, save for the interchange of names: “Hello, Sally, I am glad to see you,” and her own reply with no more warmth or originality.
To herself at any rate she could confess that she had proposed a walk in order that she and Dan might have a brief time together without half a dozen or more persons surrounding them. If Dan only had made an effort to walk beside her they might easily have arranged to drop a few paces behind the others.
But Dan had made no such effort and apparently had no such thought. Already he and Mary Gilchrist were speeding on an eighth of a mile ahead, Mary’s golden scarf and Dan’s blue one, whipped by the wind, were like gay pennants urging the stragglers to follow.
But Sally could not walk rapidly on the icy ground and already was out of breath. Neither had she any interest in the arrival at the summit of the hill, since the thought of the tobogganing terrified her and she had no wish to confess the fact.
Reaching the top of the hill, Sally allowed Bettina Graham, her sister Alice, and Peggy Webster to reveal their Camp Fire prowess by starting a fire from the oily bark of a white birch tree, while Dan Webster, Philip Stead and Mary Gilchrist made the original test of the toboggan slide.
Three-quarters of an hour later, still standing beside the now huge bonfire, Sally never had moved a dozen paces away, and this in spite of repeated invitation from nearly every one of her companions to make the journey down the long, smooth path of ice to the edge of Half Moon Lake.
“Thanks, I don’t believe I would care for it. Yes, I am a little afraid, besides I should not like the long walk up the hill when the ride is over,” she had protested politely but with the firmness the other girls recognized as characteristic.
Dan Webster appeared either to be oblivious to, or else to have forgotten Sally’s accustomed obstinacy. Not once but half a dozen times he urged her to take part, insisting that he would take care of her and even bring her back up the hill. Sally continued to shake her head: “Thanks very much, you are awfully kind, but I had rather not,” until finally even Dan himself desisted.
Besides Sally Ashton there was one other member of the party who would not be persuaded to attempt the tobogganing—Allan Drain.