“Shoo, get out!” shouted Aunt Clara, throwing her slipper with neat aim into the cow’s face. Bossy looked reproachfully at her and walked farther into the cabin, standing close beside the row of bunks.
Katherine raised her head from the blanket to see what was going on and looked right into the open mouth of the creature as it stood over her. “Murder! It’s going to eat me up!” she shrieked, diving under the covers with a prolonged howl.
By this time Aunt Clara had found the whistle with which she always summoned her husband when she needed him and blew a long, shrill blast. A few minutes later Uncle Teddy appeared at the door, with a string of startled boys running out of their cabin behind him, and at a word of command from him, accompanied by several emphatic pokes and proddings, Mrs. Bossy meekly turned and walked out through the doorway, which was considerably the worse for her entrance. She had probably strayed from the nearest farmhouse and was suffering from the intense cold. Attracted by the light streaming from the little window of the cabin she had come to find shelter, and when nobody answered her first gentle knocks with her horns, she had taken matters into her own hands and become housebreaker. She was stabled in a lean-to shelter for the rest of the night and made comfortable with straw and a blanket.
“Isn’t it funny how all the suffering critters come to our hospitable door for shelter?” said Katherine at the breakfast table. “Just like Sandhelo. He came of his own accord, also.”
“They must know that we keep the Fire Law,” answered Hinpoha. “‘Whose house is bare and dark and cold, whose house is cold, this is his own’!”
“Isn’t it strange that she came to our door, and not to the boys’,” said Gladys. “They had a light shining, too, but her footprints show that she came past their door to stop at ours.”
“That’s because she was a lady,” replied Uncle Teddy, helping himself to his fifth slice of fried bacon, “and no lady would come bustling into a gentleman’s apartment like that. Hurry up and get your chores done, you housekeepers and wood-gatherers, and let’s go out and make a snow man.”
“Let’s make a totem-pole,” suggested Katherine, when they were all out playing in the snow. “It’s lots more epic than making a snow man.”