CHAPTER XXIII
Taking a Walk
"PHEW!" gasped Jean, wheeling as the north wind, sweeping round thecorner, caught her square in the face. "I don't think much of that!It's like ice."
"Ugh!" groaned Marjory, "I wish I'd stayed home."
"Mercy!" gulped Henrietta, "it's blowing my skin off."
After that, no one had very much to say. The girls needed their breathfor other purposes. With heads down and jackets pulled tightly aboutthem, they started up the long hill with the wind in their faces. Itwas not a pleasant wind. Cold and cutting, it flung icy particles ofsnow against their cheeks, nipped their unprotected ears, stung theirfingers and found the thin places in their garments. It rushed downtheir throats when they opened their mouths to speak, wrapped theirpetticoats so tightly about them that they had to keep unwindingthemselves in order to walk at all, heaped the whirling snow in driftsand filled the air so full of flakes that it was only between guststhat the houses were visible. Worst of all, the way was very muchuphill, and Mabel, besides being short of breath, was burdened withthe basket of eggs. The snow seemed to take a delight in piling itselfdirectly in front of them.
"Ugh!" gasped Henrietta, "I wish my stockings were fur-lined. Theythawed out in Mrs. Malony's and now they're frozen stiff. I don't like'em."
"Mine, too," panted Mabel.
"And all my skirts," groaned Marjory. "The edges are like saws andthey're scraping my knees."
"How do you like a real storm?" queried Jean, steering Henriettathrough a mighty drift.
"Not so well as I thought I should," admitted Henrietta. "I miss myblizzard clothes."
The streets, when the girls finally reached the top of the hill, weredeserted. Even the sides of the houses looked like solid walls of snow,for the wind had hurled the big flakes in gigantic handfuls against thebuildings until they were all nicely coated with a thick frosting; andso, all the world was white. And, by the time the five girls reachedJean's house, for they finally accomplished that difficult feat, they,too, were nicely plastered from head to heels with the clinging snow.They looked like animated snow men as they piled thankfully into Mrs.Mapes's parlor.
The girls themselves were warm and glowing from the unusual exercise,but their stockings and cotton skirts were frozen stiff.
"Henrietta will simply have to stay all night," said Mrs. Mapes,discovering the wet stockings. "I sent the coachman home half an hourago for the sake of the horses. I'll telephone Mrs. Slater that you'resafe. You other girls must go home at once and change your clothesbefore they thaw. And, Jean, you and Henrietta must get into bed atonce. I'll bring you a hot supper inside of five minutes."
"That'll be fun," declared Jean, seizing Henrietta's hand and makingfor the stairs. "Good-night, girls."
"I guess," said Marjory, when the Mapes's door had closed behindBettie, Mabel and herself, "Jean and Henrietta are going to be greatchums."
"I'm afraid so," sighed Bettie. "I like Henrietta; but, dear me, Idon't want Jean to like her better than she does me."
"She won't," comforted Marjory. "Henrietta's all right for a littlewhile at a time, but you're _always_ nice."
Thanks to Mrs. Mapes's instructions, none of the girls caught cold; buttheir mothers were so afraid that they might that not one of them waspermitted to poke her nose out of doors the next day. To Henrietta'sdelight, the drifts reached the fence tops; and, until a huge plow,drawn by six horses arranged in pairs, had cleared the way, the roadswere impassable. The wind, after raging furiously all night, hadquieted down; but the snow continued to fall in big, soft, clingingflakes, every tree and shrub was weighted down with a heavy burden andall the world was white. To Henrietta, who had never before seen snowin such abundance, it was a most pleasing spectacle.
Bettie, however, was sorely troubled. There was Jean shut in withattractive Henrietta and getting "chummier" with her every minute.There was Bettie, a solitary prisoner in a fuzzy red wrapper and bedslippers, sighing for her beloved Jean. To be sure, Bettie had brothersof assorted sizes and complexions, but not one of them could fillJean's place in Bettie's troubled affections.
Had Bettie but known it, however, Jean was not having an entirelycomfortable day. It happened to be one of Henrietta's "Frederika"days. The lively girl tormented bashful Wallace by pretending thatshe herself was excessively shy, and, as shyness was not one of herattributes, her victim was covered with confusion. She teased andbewildered Roger by chattering so rapidly in French that he couldn'tunderstand a word she said, although he had studied the language forthree years under Miss McGinnis and was proud of his progress. A numberof times she became so witty at Jean's expense that "Sallie" had torush to the rescue with profuse apologies. Also, she disturbed both Mr.and Mrs. Mapes by her extreme restlessness.
"My sakes," confided Mrs. Mapes, in the privacy of the kitchen, whithershe had fled for the sake of quiet, "I'm glad that girl doesn't belongto me; she isn't still a minute."
"Perhaps," said Roger, who had escaped on the pretext of blacking hisshoes, "it's because she has traveled so much. Maybe she feels as ifshe had to keep going."
"Bettie's certainly a great deal quieter," agreed Jean, who lookedtired, "and she doesn't talk all night when a body wants to sleep; butHenrietta's more fun. You see, you never know what she's going to donext, but Bettie's always just the same."
At dinner time that day, Mrs. Mapes asked her husband if he knewwhether the School Board had accomplished anything at the meeting heldthe night previously.
"No," replied Mr. Mapes, a tall, thin man with a preoccupied air."And they never will as long as each one of them wants to put thatschoolhouse in a different place. They can't come to any sort of anagreement."
Indeed, the poor School Board was having a perplexing time. Thecitizens that lived at the north end of the town wanted the new schoolbuilt there. Other tax-payers declared that the southern portion ofLakeville, being more densely populated, offered a more suitable site.Then, since the town stretched westward for a long distance, a thirdgroup of persons were clamoring for the building in _their_ part of thetown. Besides all these, there were persons who declared that the oldsite was the _only_ place for a school building. As the Board itselfwas divided as to opinion, it began to look as if Lakeville would haveto get along without a schoolhouse unless it could afford to buildfour, and the tax-payers said it couldn't do that.
"I wish," said Mrs. Mapes, "that I could find a first-class girls'school within a reasonable distance. If they don't have a properbuilding in Lakeville by next September I'll send Jean away. ThatBaptist cellar is damp, and I know it. Besides, I went to a goodboarding school myself and I'd like Jean to have the experience--I'llnever forget those days."
"Send her," suggested Henrietta, "to the school I'm going to."
"Which one is that?" asked Mrs. Mapes.
"I don't know; but Grandmother says it mustn't be too far away. Shewants me within reach."
"I think," said Mrs. Mapes, reflectively, "I'll send for somecatalogues."
The next morning the sun shone brightly on a glittering world.Henrietta went into ecstasies over it, for even the tree trunks seemedincrusted with diamonds--or at least rhine-stones, Henrietta said. Thecoachman arrived with the Slater horses a little before nine o'clockand the two girls were carried off to school in state. They waved theirhands to Bettie as they passed her trudging in the snow; and poorBettie was suddenly conscious of a sharp twinge of jealousy.
Now that Henrietta had been properly called on and had returned thecall, she became a permanent part of all the Cottagers' plans.Thereafter, there was hardly a day when one or another of the fourgirls did not see the fascinating maid of many names. They always foundher interesting, attractive and entertaining. Yet, there were dayswhen she teased them almost to the limit of their endurance, timeswhen they could not quite approve her and moments when she fairlyroused them to anger; but, in spite of her faults, they could nothelp loving her, because, with all her impishness and her distressinglack of repose, she was w
arm-hearted, loyal and thoroughly true. And,although she possessed dozens of advantages that the other girlslacked, although she was beautifully gowned, splendidly housed andbountifully supplied with spending money, never did she show, in anyway, the faintest scrap of false pride. She mentioned her life abroad,in a simple, matter-of-fact way (as if it were a mere incident thatmight have happened to anybody), but never in any boasting spirit. Herprankishness, however, kept her from being too good or too lovable;for, as her Grandmother said, she spared no one; sometimes even Jean,who was a model of patience, found it hard to forgive fun-lovingFrederika, the Disguised Duchess.