Fred was angry and undignified. He had had as much as he could bear all the evening, and this was a straw too much. Mary, on the other hand, had enjoyed an unusual triumph; but how her feet did ache with cold! The blood had left them hours ago to light a blazing fire in her head; and now to stand on that icy door-stone was torture!
“I know I shall freeze, but I’ll bear it,” thought she, taking gay little waltzing steps. “How they do admire me, and it would spoil it all to cry. Why, all the great spelling I could do in a year wouldn’t make up for one cry.”
Just as she had got as far as to remember that she had heard of a man whose feet “froze and fell off,” Grace Mallon asked when her brother Phil would have a vacation? She had shut her teeth together firmly, but being obliged to answer this question, her voice, to her dire surprise and confusion, came forth in a sob! Not one articulate word could she speak; and there was Captain James Hunnicut looking straight at her! Keener mortification the poor child had seldom known. Following so closely, too, upon her evening’s triumph! But at that moment Mr. Garland, who was about driving off with his nephew, stopped his horse and said: “This is too bad! Here, Miss Flaxie, here’s a chance for you to ride with us. We can make room for her, can’t we Stephen? But as for you, Master Fred, I see no other way but you must wait for your horse.”
Mary, utterly humbled, sprang with gratitude into Mr. Garland’s sleigh, without trusting herself to look back.
And Fred did “wait,” with a heart swelling as big as a foot-ball, and saw his cousin bestowed between the two gentlemen, who smiled on him patronizingly, as upon a boy of four in pinafores.
This was hard. And when Mr. Fling appeared at last, laughing heartlessly, and drove the half-frozen boy part of the way home, leaving him at the hotel, the most convenient point for himself, and advising him to take ginger-tea and go to bed,—this oh, this, was harder yet!
But it was Mrs. Gray who suffered most from this little fiasco. Before the children returned she was flushed and nervous, and Dr. Gray blamed himself for having allowed them to go.
“I’m thankful, my daughter, that you’ve got here alive,” said she, sending for Mary to come to her chamber; “Whiz is a fiery fellow, and Fred isn’t a good driver.”
“Was it as delightful as you expected, Mary? And did you spell them all down?” asked her father.
“Yes, sir, it was delightful; and I spelled ever so many hard words, and only missed one; but Fred spells shockingly,” replied Mary, taking up a vial from the stand and putting it down again.