The Green Satin Gown Part 11

The woman, who had been weeping wildly, could hardly believe her eyes.

She caught the little boy and smothered him with kisses, chafing his cold hands, and crying over him.

"I didn't know!" she said. "I didn't know till he was gone. I told him at noon he was to go, never thinking 'twould be like this. I was sure he was lost and dead, but I couldn't leave my sick baby. Bless you, whoever you are, man or woman! But stay and get warm, and rest ye! You're never going out again in this awful storm!"

But Maine was gone.

In Miss Wayland's parlor the suspense was fast becoming unendurable.

They had heard Maine's Indian whoop, and some of them, Miss Wayland herself among the number, thought it was a cry of distress; but Ma.s.sachusetts rightly interpreted the call, and a.s.sured them that it was a call of encouragement to the bewildered child.

Then came silence within the house, and a prolonged clamor--a sort of witches' chorus, with wailing and shrieking without. Once a heavy branch was torn from one of the great elms, and came thundering down on the roof. This proved the finishing touch for poor Virginia. She went into violent hysterics, and was carried off to bed by Miss Way land and Old New York.

Ma.s.sachusetts presently ventured to explore a little. She hastened through the hall to the front door, opened it a few inches, and put her hand on the twine which was fastened to the handle. What was her horror to find that it hung loose, swinging idly in the wind! Sick at heart, she shut the door, and pressing her hands over her eyes, tried to think.

Maine must be lost in the howling storm! She must find her; but where and how?

Oh! if Miss Wayland had only let her go at first! She was older; it would not have mattered so much.

But now, quick! she would wrap herself warmly, and slip out without any one knowing.

The girl was turning to fly up-stairs, when suddenly something fell heavily against the door outside. There was a fumbling for the handle; the next moment it flew open, and something white stumbled into the hall, shut the door, and sat down heavily on the floor.

"Personal--rudeness!" gasped Maine, struggling for breath. "You shut the door in my face! One cent for the missionary fund."

The great storm was over. The sun came up, and looked down on a strange, white world. No fences, no walls; only a smooth ridge where one of these had been. Trees which the day before had been quite tall now looked like dwarfs, spreading their broad arms not far from the snow carpet beneath them. Road there was none; all was smooth, save where some huge drift nodded its crest like a billow curling for its downward rush.

Maine, spite of her scarred face, which showed as many patches as that of a court lady in King George's times, was jubilant. Tired!

not a bit of it! A little stiff, just enough to need "limbering out,"

as they said at home.

"There is no b.u.t.ter!" she announced at breakfast. "There is no milk, no meat for dinner. Therefore, I go a-snow-shoeing. Dear Miss Wayland, let me go! I have learned my algebra, and I shall be discovering unknown quant.i.ties at every step, which will be just as instructive."

Miss Wayland could refuse nothing to the heroine of last night's adventure. Behold Maine, therefore, triumphant, sallying forth, clad once more in her blanket suit, and dragging her sled behind her.

There was no struggling now--no hand-to-hand wrestling with storm-demons. The sun laughed from a sky as blue and deep as her own sky of Maine, and the girl laughed with him as she walked along, the powdery snow flying in a cloud from her snow-shoes at every step.

Such a sight had never been seen in Mentor village before. The people came running to their upper windows--their lower ones were for the most part buried in snow--and stared with all their eyes at the strange apparition.

In the street, life was beginning to stir. People had found, somewhat to their own surprise, that they were alive and well after the blizzard; and knots of men were cl.u.s.tered here and there, discussing the storm, while some were already at work tunnelling through the drifts.

Mr. Perkins, the butcher, had just got his door open, and great was his amazement when Maine hailed him from the top of a great drift, and demanded a quarter of mutton with some soup meat.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MAINE HAILED HIM FROM THE TOP OF A GREAT DRIFT."]

"Yes, miss!" he stammered, open-mouthed with astonishment. "I--I've got the meat; but I wasn't--my team isn't out this morning. I don't know about sending it."

"I have a 'team' here!" said Maine, quietly, pulling her sled alongside. "Give me the mutton, Mr. Perkins; you may charge it to Miss Wayland, please, and I will take it home."

The b.u.t.ter-man and the grocer were visited in the same way, and Maine, rather embarra.s.sed by the concentrated observation of the whole village, turned to pull her laden sled back, when suddenly a window was thrown open, and a voice exclaimed:

"Young woman! I will give you ten dollars for the use of those snow-shoes for an hour!"

Maine looked up in amazement, and laughed merrily when she saw the well-known countenance of the village doctor.

"What! You, my dear young lady?" cried the good man. "This is 'Maine to the Rescue,' indeed! I might have known it was you. But I repeat my offer. Make it anything you please, only let me have the snow-shoes. I cannot get a horse out, and have two patients dangerously ill. What is your price for the magic shoes?"

"My price, doctor?" repeated Maine, looking up with dancing eyes.

"My price is--one cent. For the Missionary Fund! The snow-shoes are yours, and I will get home somehow with my sled and the mutton."

So she did, and Doctor Fowler made his calls with the snow-shoes, and saved a life, and brought cheer and comfort to many. But it was ten dollars, and not one cent, which he gave to the Missionary Fund.

THE SCARLET LEAVES

"The Committee will please come to order!" said Maine.

"What's up?" asked Ma.s.sachusetts, pausing in her occupation of peeling chestnuts.

"Why, you know well enough, Ma.s.sachusetts. Here it is Wednesday, and we don't know yet what we are going to do on Friday evening. We must do something, or go shamed to our graves. Never a senior cla.s.s has missed its Frivolous Friday, since the school began."

"Absolutely no hope of the play?"

"None! Alma's part is too important; no one could possibly take it at two days' notice. Unless--they say Chicago has a real gift for acting; but somehow, I don't feel as if she were the person."

"I should bar that, positively," put in Tennessee. "In the first place, Chicago has not been here long enough to be identified with the cla.s.s. She is clever, of course, or she could not have entered junior last year; but--well, it isn't necessary to say anything more; she is out of the question."

"It is too exasperating!" said Ma.s.sachusetts. "Alma might have waited another week before coming down with measles."

"It's harder for her than for any one else, Ma.s.sachusetts," said Maine. "Poor dear; she almost cried her eyes out yesterday, when the spots appeared, and there was no more doubt."

"Yes, I know that; she is a poor, unfortunate Lamb, and I love her, you know I do; still, a growl may be permitted, Maine. There's nothing criminal in a growl. The question is, as you were saying, what shall we do?"

"A dance?"

"We had a dance last week!" said Maine; "at least the soph.o.m.ores did, and we don't want to copy them."

"A straw-ride?"

"A candy-pull?"

"A concert?"

"The real question is," said Tennessee, cracking her chestnut leisurely, "what does Maine intend to do? If she thinks we made her Cla.s.s President because we meant to arrange things ourselves, she is more ignorant than I supposed her. Probably she has the whole thing settled in her Napoleonic mind. Out with it, Moosetocmaguntic!"

Maine smiled, and looked round her. The Committee was cl.u.s.tered in a group at the foot of a great chestnut-tree, at the very edge of a wood. The leaves were still thick on the trees, and the October sun shone through their golden ma.s.ses, pouring a flood of warmth and light down on the greensward, sprinkled with yellow leaves and half-open chestnut burrs. Ma.s.sachusetts and Tennessee, st.u.r.dy and four-square as their own hills; Old New York and New Jersey, and Maine herself, a tall girl with clear, kind eyes, and a color that came and went as she talked. This was the Committee.