"Chi!" called Mr. Blossom towards the barn.
"Whoa!" shouted a voice that sounded frosty in spite of itself. "Whoa, Bess!"
"Come into the kitchen before you turn in; there's some hot molasses tea waiting for us."
"Be there in a minute," he shouted back, and Bess pranced into the barn.
"Oh, Mary, this is good," said Mr. Blossom, as he slipped out of his buffalo-robe coat and into his warm house-jacket, dropped his boots outside in the shed, and put on his carpet-slippers that had been waiting for him on the hearth.
"It is home, Ben," said his wife, bringing out clean tin cups from the pantry, and putting them to warm beside the kettle on the hearth.
"Yes, with you in it, Mary," he said with the smile that had won him his true-love eighteen years before.
"Come in, Chi," he called towards the shed, whence came sounds as if some one were dancing a double-shuffle in snow-boots.
"'Fraid I 'll thaw 'n' make a puddle on the hearth, Mis' Blossom. I 'm as stiff as an icicle: guess I 'll take my tea perpendic'lar; I ain't fit to sit down."
"Sit down, sit down, Chi," said Mrs. Blossom. "You 'll enjoy the tea more; and give yourself a thorough heating before you go to bed. I 've put the soapstone in it," she added.