“Talking about things being free,” she said pointing to the splendid little evergreens all about them. “See all those trees! They really should be thinned out. They’re free for the asking. Yet there are ten thousand homes in the city where there will be no Christmas tree this year. What do you say we cut down two or three hundred of them and take them along? We can play Santa to that many families anyway.”
“I think it’s a fine idea,” said Lucile.
“So do I! So do I,” said the others in unison.
“Well then that’s all settled. And now for a lark. Watch out; here’s the entrance to the igloo. Just take a look down, then we’ll get up the towers and start talking across empty space to the poor tired old city,” laughed Marie.
CHAPTER XVI
AN UNEXPECTED WELCOME
“It’s an exact reproduction of an igloo!” exclaimed Lucile.
The three girls, following the example of their hostess, had dropped through a hole some three feet square, had poised for an instant upon a board landing, to drop a second three feet and find themselves in a small square room. Leaving this room, they had gone scooting along a narrow passageway, to drop on their knees and crawl through a circular opening into a room some twenty feet square.
“Why!” exclaimed their hostess, “have you seen an igloo somewhere?”
Lucile smiled. “Marian and I spent a year on the Arctic coast of Alaska and Marian has lived most of her life in Nome on Behring Sea.”
“Why then,” Marie Neighbor’s face was a study, “then I’m just a—a—what do you call it? a chechecko, I guess—beside you.”