“You said it, Miss Jordan. I love it myself—though I never thought of snowflakes being like airplanes before. Which way do you want to go?”
“You’re the leader, Gretchen. Anywhere you say suits me.”
“Then let’s tramp over to the pond, Miss Jordan. The ice ought to be holding. We’ll stop at the garage and fetch a broom along. There’s too much snow for skating, but we might make a slide.”
“That will be fun,” agreed Dorothy, as they came down the steps and swung along the white expanse of driveway. “I haven’t done anything like that since I was a kid. How far’s the pond from here?”
“About half a mile. Doctor Winn owns several hundred acres. It’s down yonder in a hollow. This time of year when the trees are bare, you can see it plainly from the house. Today there’s too much snow.”
“There certainly is plenty of it!” Dorothy was ploughing through the fluffy white mass nearly up to her knees. “A good eighteen inches must have fallen already and it’s drifting fast. If it doesn’t stop by tonight, Winncote will be snowed in for a while. What’s that building over there, Gretchen—gray stone, isn’t it?”
“That’s the laboratory, miss. It’s really a wing of the house. The stables are just beyond, but this storm’s so thick, it blots them out. Well, here we are at the garage. If you’ll wait a minute, I’ll step inside and get a broom.”
“Get two if you can,” suggested Dorothy. “Then we’ll both get some exercise, and they’ll come in handy while we’re getting through the drifts.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Gretchen. She disappeared through a door in the side of the building.
Dorothy looked about her. Rolling clouds of windswept snowflakes made it impossible to see objects more than a few yards away with any distinctness. The dark shadow of low clouds painted the white of her landscape a cold, dull gray. But she noticed, as she waited, that the storm was driving in gusts, that occasionally there would be a short lull when the sun, tinging the sky with rose and yellow, seemed fighting to break its way through to this white-blanketed world. Then Gretchen, a broom in each hand, joined her.
“Whew! that place was stuffy,” she said, handing one of the brooms to Dorothy, and starting ahead at right angles from the way they had come. “Hanley made a fuss giving me two—he would! It’s a wonder the cars don’t melt in there. He keeps the place like an oven. All the help from the city is like that. They can’t seem to get warm enough, and the way they hate fresh air is a caution! I roomed with Sadie, the other chambermaid, when I first came, and you won’t believe it, but that girl had nailed our window shut so it couldn’t be opened! I spoke to Mr. Tunbridge next morning, and he gave me a room of my own. I always did like Mr. Tunbridge. He’s a real gentleman, he is.”