But there was to be no such godless amusement as dancing. The young people would frolic and play plays with kissing penalties, which could by no means corrupt them as much as joining hands and jumping to the tune of a fiddle.
Groups were already descending to the dining-room, and Mary Thompson struggled hard to hook one of Sarah Macauley’s dresses over her stouter waist.
“Your sister didn’t come?” remarked Sarah politely, in the modulated voice that her mother trained.
“Yes, she did,” exclaimed Mary. “She was along with the load. Why, where is Persill?”
This inquiry at once became general. Priscilla was nowhere in the house. The panic-stricken company could not remember seeing her since crossing the Feeder. They all thought she returned to the sled with them. John Davis was sure he helped her in.
Theophilus Gill, turning livid around the edges of his beard, said the horses might have gone to Jericho for all of him, and he’d ’tended to Persilla Thompson himself if he had known the rest of the boys wasn’t goin’ to. Priscilla’s sister began to cry aloud, and such young ladies as did not accompany her gazed at each other in pale apprehension. But Mrs. Macauley came sternly to the front. She would not allow Mary Thompson to proclaim that Priscilla was drowned, and Theoph Gill had done it, and she forbade the party falling into a panic.
Her son Martin had his filly and sleigh ready, and while she snatched blankets and brandy, she marshaled forth such young men to form a separate search party as seemed suitable in her eyes. Mrs. Macauley would not have Priscilla Thompson drowned in the Feeder, and left strict orders on her own offspring against any such impression—which the whole company obeyed. Then she got into the sleigh, and Mart galloped his filly.
He made but one remark to his mother during this ride.
“If she’d come along with us as I wanted her to, this wouldn’t have happened, mother!”
His face showed ghastly through the dark, and his husky voice jarred the breast of the woman who bore him.