It was Saturday morning, and it had begun to snow; at first in a desultory fashion before Tess and Dot--or even Sammy Pinkney--were out of bed. Of course, they had hailed the fleecy, drifting snow with delight; it looked to be the first real snowstorm of the season.
But by the time breakfast was well over (and breakfast on Saturday morning at the old Corner House was a "movable feast," for the Kenway sisters did not all get up so promptly as they did on school days) Sammy Pinkney waded almost to the top of his rubber boots in coming from his house to play with the two younger Kenway sisters.
Of course, Sammy had picked out the deepest places to wade in; but the snow really was gathering very fast. Mrs. MacCall, the Kenways' dear friend and housekeeper, declared that it was gathering and drifting as fast as ever she had seen it as a child "at home in the Hielands," as she expressed it.
"'Tis stay-in-the-hoose weather," the old Scotch woman declared. "Roughs and toughs, like this Sammy Pinkney boy, can roll in the snow like porpoises in the sea; but little girls would much better stay indoor and dance 'Katie Beardie.'"
"Oh, Mrs. Mac!" cried Dot, "what is 'dancing Katie Beardie'?"
So the housekeeper stopped long enough in her oversight of Linda, the Finnish girl, to repeat the old rhyme one hears to this day amid the clatter of little clogs upon the pavements of Edinburgh.
"'Katie Beardie had a grice, It could skate upon the ice; Wasna that a dainty grice? Dance, Katie Beardie!
Katie Beardie had a hen, Cackled but and cackled ben; Wasna that a dainty hen? Dance, Katie Beardie!'
And you little ones have been 'cackling but and cackling ben' ever since breakfast time. Do, children, go upstairs, like good bairns, and stay awhile."
Tess and Dot understood a good deal of Mrs. MacCall's Scotch, for they heard it daily. But now she had to explain that a "grice" was a pig and that "but" and "ben" meant in and out. But even Sammy knew how to "count out" in Scotch, for they had long since learned Mrs. MacCall's doggerel for games.
Now they played hide and seek, using one of the counting-out rhymes the housekeeper had taught them:
Eenerty, feenerty, fickerty, faig, Ell, dell, domen, aig. Irky, birky, story, rock, Ann, tan, touzelt Jock.