"Now, how about the woollen stockings?" asked Tom, while Polly and Jasper both sang out, "Take care," and "Go slowly."
Adela didn't answer, but stuck the sharp end of her alpenstock smartly into the ice.
"Something is the matter with my stocking," at last said the parson's wife, stopping and holding out her right foot.
The guide nearest her stopped, too, and kneeling down on the ice, he pulled it into place, for it had slipped half off.
"Now be very careful," warned Grandpapa, "and don't venture too near the edge," as he paused with Phronsie and the guide. The others, coming up, looked down into a round, green pool of water that seemed to stare up at them, as if to say, "I am of unknown depth, so beware of me."
"That gives me the 'creeps,' Polly, as you say," Mrs. Henderson observed. "Dear me, I shall never forget how that green water looks;" and she shivered and edged off farther yet. "Supposing any one _should_ fall in!"
"Well, he'd go down right straight through the globe, seems to me," said Tom, with a last look at the pool as they turned off, "It looks as if it had no end, till one would fetch up on the other side."
"I love to hop over these little crevasses," said Polly, and suiting the action to the word.
"Something is the matter with my stocking again," announced Mrs. Henderson to the guide, presently. "I am sorry to trouble you, but it needs to be fixed."
He didn't understand the words, but there was no mistaking the foot thrust out with the woollen sock, now wet and sodden, half off again. So he kneeled down and pulled it on once more.
Before they reached the other side, the parson's wife had had that stocking pulled on six times, until at last, the guide, finding no more pleasure in a repetition of the performance, took a string from his pocket, and bunching up in his fist a good portion of the stocking heel, he wound the string around it and tied it fast, cut off the string, and returned the rest to his pocket.
"Why do you tie up the heel?" queried Mrs. Henderson. "I should think it much better to secure it in front." But he didn't understand, and the rest were quite a good bit in advance, and hating to give trouble, she went on, the stocking heel sticking out a few inches. But she kept it on her foot, so that might be called a success.
