As she hurried along, breathing in the frosty air, like Pilgrim she spied a figure a great way off coming toward her.
"Another left-over," she thought and went on her way, her steps keeping time to a poem she was repeating out loud:
"'St. Agnes' Eve—ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl for all his feathers was a-cold;
The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass
And silent was the flock in woolly fold——'"
Molly had just repeated the last line over, too absorbed to notice the advancing figure through the pine trees, except sub-consciously to see that it was a girl.
"Ah, here's the holly," she exclaimed.
"'Numb were the beadsman's fingers——'"
She knelt on the frozen ground and began cutting off branches with the penknife.
"I suppose you are rather surprised to see me, aren't you?"
Molly looked up. It was Judith Blount.
"Why, where did you come from, Judith?" she asked. "Didn't you go up to New York Friday, after all?"