fingers. “It ’s colder than the very blazes,” he said, “The wind switched to the north an hour ago. It ‘ll be twenty below zero by morning, and the snow ’s coming down—say, hurry those folks up a little.”
Sounds of laughter came from the girls’ dressing-room. Prudence, comfortably sitting in a rocking-chair, was telling a funny story. At Bob’s call all the girls but Prudence hurried into the outer room.
“Wait for me,” called Prudence; “I ’ve only one moccasin on.”
In the excitement, nobody heard her. Every one flocked out to the car, leaving Prudence struggling with her second moccasin. Two minutes later she was making her way through the snow toward the track, which she reached just as the brightly lighted car had reached its best speed and was moving swiftly away in the darkness.
“Oh!” gasped dismayed Prudence. “Surely somebody will miss me.”
Nobody did, however, except Bob, who, discovering promptly that Prudence was in neither the car nor the trailer, impulsively took a flying leap from the rear platform, without previously mentioning his purpose. Both cars were full, and Grace supposed, naturally, that her cousins were safe in the trailer. Reaching the clubhouse, Bob found a decidedly crestfallen Prudence, crouching with outstretched hands over the dying fire.
‘Well! This is a nice how-do-you-do!” exclaimed Bob.
“Did the car come back?” asked Prudence, looking up eagerly.
“No, it did n’t,” growled Bob, who was rubbing his pale yellow nose with a snowball. “I suppose it would have if I ’d waited to ask, but like an idiot, I just jumped off, That fire is n’t going to last ten minutes longer, and there is n’t another stick left in the shed. It ‘ll be colder than a barn here in another hour. Put on your snow-shoes; we ’ll have to walk to town—mother ‘ll be worried to death when Grace gets home without us. What color is my nose now?”
“Bright crimson.”
“Then it ’s all right,” said Bob, in a relieved tone. “Now come on, we must hurry; we must!”
Prudence gave a little gasp when she turned from the shelter of the trees to the open track. The wind, straight from the north, came in icy blasts. In many places the trolley wire overhead was all that indicated the car line. Prudence soon found that snow-shoeing in mild weather and plowing along through freshly fallen drifts were two very different matters. The wind striking the girl’s left cheek—hand in hand, they were traveling toward the east—was like a knife,
“Oh, Bob,” she wailed. “My face—”
“Rub it with snow,” shouted Bob, to make himself heard above the blizzard. “Come on—don’t stand still. It won’t be so bad after we ’ve turned the corner.”
It was bad enough, however, while it lasted. The distance to the comer was equal to about three city blocks, but it seemed to Prudence, gasping for breath in the dry, cold air, and laboriously dragging one heavy, snow-burdened foot to its place before the other, more like three miles. Half blinded by the stinging snow, the weary but plucky girl constantly stumbled, in spite of her firm clutch on Bob’s hand, into the deepest depressions and over the highest drifts.
“My stockings are frozen stiff, like icicles,” wailed Prudence. “I forgot to put on my leggings. My skirts are frozen all around the bottom, too.”
“Never mind your stockings I’m sheltering you all I can, but it ’s worse than I expected. Brace up, Prue; we ‘ll make it.”
The turning-point was reached at last. From this spot the car line ran due south, in the cenier of a broad highway lighted at long intervals by electric lights. It was within the city limits, but as yet there were no houses. With light ahead of them and the wind at their backs, it was, as Bob had promised, much easier walking. Even with this improvement, however, there was a long two miles ahead of them. The wind was still blowing a gale, the snow was piling itself in ten-foot drifts, and the mercury was an incredible number of degrees below zero. Prudence, with tears frozen on her cheeks, was certain she could not walk another block. But she did. Bob, without complaining of his own discomfort, scolded her, pulled her out of drifts,