However, when he was on his feet, though feeling much shaken, and still a bit weak, his courage came back. Something surely could be done to relieve conditions like this.
The snow was piled fantastically in huge mounds over the fields, and the railway cuts would be drifted full, so no train would run for days. But Peter felt that he could walk the distance back to town.
His host made no objection, and no offer to drive him.
In the tiny bedroom off the kitchen, which Mrs. Paine had given him, as he shiveringly made his preparations for leaving, he heard a strange voice in the other room, a girl's voice, cheery, pleasant.
"I just came in to see how you are, Mrs. Paine. No thank you, I won't put the team in the stable—I ran them into the shed. I am on my way home from driving the children to school. Some storm, wasn't it? The snow is ribbed like a washboard, but it is hard enough to carry the horses."
Peter came out, with his coat and his hat in his hand, and was introduced. His first thought was one of extreme mortification—three days' beard was on his face. His toilet activities had been limited in number. He knew he felt wretched, seedy, groggy—and looked it. Something in Pearl's manner re-assured him.
"Going to town?" said she kindly, "rather too far for you to walk when you are feeling tough. Come home with me if you are not in a hurry, and I will drive you in this afternoon."
Peter accepted gladly.
He hardly looked at her, holding to some faint hope that if he did not look at her she would not be able to see him either, and at this moment Peter's one desire was not to be seen, at least by this girl.
In a man's coonskin coat she stood at the door, with her face rosy with the cold. She brought an element of hope and youth, a new spirit of adventure into the drab room, with its sodden, commonplace dreariness. Peter's spirits began to rise.