“Is this Mr. Gwynne’s residence?” asked Betty, a little timid, for a deep masculine voice had answered her ring at the telephone.

“Yes,” the response came, pleasantly.

“May I speak to Carolyn, please? It is Betty Lee.”

“I’ll call Carolyn.” There was a few moments of waiting.

“’Lo, Bettykins. I was just going to call you.”

“Were you? What were you going to tell me?”

“You say what you were going to first.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Please.”

“Well, though I just hate so to tell you what I’m going to.”

“So do I hate to tell you!”

Betty’s little laugh, came to Carolyn over the wire.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if it is about the same thing! Why Carolyn, I’m just sick about it, but I don’t see how we can come to your house tonight. Father has to have a conference or something tonight down town and can’t drive us out to your place. He’s staying down for dinner somewhere, you know. So there’s no one to take us and Mother doesn’t think it’s safe for us to go on the car and then walk as far as we’d have to, especially coming home.”

“That would be all right with our putting you on the car here. But really, Betty, it is a sort of relief, because I was wondering how to tell you that I can’t have the party at all! Sister’s having the house both nights, and besides, I was going to have you at least taken back home, so your father wouldn’t have to come for you, but the cars will be in use, too. It was too bad of my sister not to tell me and Mother did not happen to say anything till this morning when she was asking my sister what she wanted for decorations. I said, ‘Why, Mother, didn’t you tell me I could have a party?’ and Mother looked startled. ‘Why so I did! I hope you haven’t everybody invited!’

“So then I made it as nice for her as I could and said I thought I could change it to an afternoon one, and Betty, since you had that gorgeous party at your house, won’t you let me have you and some of the other girls at our house Saturday, tomorrow afternoon? Please. I’ve telephoned the boys that my party had to be postponed, so this will be a ‘hen party.’ I’ll have some sort of a party in the Christmas vacation, perhaps, to make it up to the boys, not to mention liking the fun myself.

“Will you mind awfully, Betty?” Carolyn’s voice was both regretful and persuasive.

“Why–no, Carolyn–only it isn’t necessary for you to have us at all, you know, and I’ve invited all the other girls.”

“I know how we can fix that, easy as pie, Betty. I’ll call all of them up–I know whom you were going to have, you know, and I’ll tell them that you and I are entertaining together at our house!”

“We-ll, but you’ll have to let me really help, you know, get the refreshments and everything.”

“I’ll see about that–there will be such oodles around, with Sister’s two parties, and we’ll have all the benefits of her spuzzy decorations and won’t hurt a thing, you know. Let’s have it a thimble party. Didn’t I see you making something for Christmas?”

“Yes. I brought a hanky I’m hemstitching for Mother in school and worked on it a little while in between lunch and class. It’s so hard to get a chance without her catching me at it at home.”

“Bring it along and finish it up, then, Betty. Is it settled, then?”

“Are you sure you want it that way?”

“Sure; and Mother will feel better about it, too.”

“Very well, Carolyn. I’m sure Janet and Sue will be delighted to come, and of course I shall.”

Thus it happened that Betty and her guests enjoyed an excellent moving picture, censored by Mrs. Lee, on Friday afternoon, with attendant pleasure of favorite sundaes and shopping in the big stores; and they had the evening quietly at home, early to bed this time, to catch up for the night before. “It is a good deal of fun with those boys,” said Janet, “but I think that it will be more restful tomorrow at Carolyn’s without them.”

“And you will love Carolyn’s home, Janet,” replied Betty, though laughing at Janet’s expression.

A soft snow fell that night. In the morning the girls looked out upon a beautiful world of white, soon to be spoiled in the city by the traffic and the soot from the good furnace fires that kept the people warm. But at Carolyn’s that afternoon little had occurred to lessen the loveliness of the snow scene. Beautiful evergreens drooped a little with the weight upon their branches. Drifts piled here and there by bushes that seemed to bear feathery blossoms. It was the first “real snow,” Dick said, and welcome, particularly to the children.

Betty had not expected so many girls, but here were not only those whom she had invited to her expected party but a number of others. It was very satisfactory. Now Janet and Sue would know just about all the girls that she wanted them to meet.

Opinions might differ about the afternoon’s being “restful.” But it was as restful as girls of high school age would be likely to want it to prove. Janet and Sue were impressed with Carolyn’s lovely home, inside and out, and declared that seeing it with the snow must be almost as good as seeing it with its flowers. Carolyn brought all the girls whom they had not met to each of them and although they did settle down with their bits of fancy-work or Christmas presents, Carolyn had them change their seats in order that groups of different girls might be together. Some things made in the arts and crafts department of the school could be brought to be worked on and Betty saw articles that she “longed to make,” she said. Janet was always a little quiet when she was first with girls strange to her, but her lack of conversation was not noticeable in the babel of voices after the girls were fairly launched upon various topics that interested them.

“Yes,” replied Betty to one, “I’ve met the mysterious ‘Don.’ His real name is Ramon, but the boys all call him ‘Don’ now, I’ve noticed, so I suppose we might as well. He doesn’t mind, he said.”

“Did you hear that, Lucille? Betty Lee knows the ‘Don.’ Well, what is he, anyhow? Spanish, as they say. I always think that the boys may be ‘kiddin’ us, you know.”

“He really is part Spanish and part Polish and some of his people were Hungarian, at least they lived in Hungary for a while and he said they were ‘nice people.’”

“How did you know so much? Is there anything mysterious about him?”

“I was just talking to him one time. He doesn’t seem the least bit mysterious to me, but I don’t think that he has anybody related to him in this country. He just boards somewhere, I suppose.”

“Then that isn’t a bit interesting.”

“Oh, yes, it is, Lucille,” spoke Peggy Pollard. “Chet Dorrance said that the Don told Ted a little bit one time and there’s somebody that’s either after him or that he’s after, I think.”

“My, isn’t that news for you?” laughed Lucille. “Peggy, you’re always so clear!”

“Well, do you suppose that Ted would tell what the boy told him in confidence?”

“Ted must have told something.”

“Couldn’t Chet overhear it, maybe?”

“Then he is really mysterious, you think, Peggy.”

“Yes. I asked him last night if he was mysterious and he said he was!”

There was a general laugh at this. “Peggy’s drawing on her imagination,” said Mary Emma.

“Where did the Don take you last night, Peggy?” queried Lucille, “to a picture show?”

“No, but he was at the same surprise party I went to,” and Peggy gave a mirthful glance in Carolyn’s direction.

“Well, if Don as the boys call him isn’t mysterious, you are, so let’s change the subject.”

Peggy had thought that with so many other girls, about twenty in all, Betty might not like to have the surprise party talked over; or it might be that some one would feel hurt at not having been included in the sudden affair. For these reasons she was quite willing to have the subject changed.

“Wouldn’t this be a delicious night to go sledding, girls?” she asked, looking out from the large window near which she sat toward the broad expanse of snow that covered the lawn and stretched beyond the clumps of bushes and trees over the spacious grounds.

“Too soft, I’m afraid, Peggy,” said Mary Emma Howland. “It didn’t melt, though, when the sun came out. I wonder if it would pack and make enough. The wind had swept the ground pretty bare at our house, but hasn’t out here.”

“Perhaps it didn’t snow everywhere alike,” brightly suggested Kathryn Allen. “Sometimes it rains out in our suburb when my father says there isn’t a particle of rain down town.”

“The paper says that there is a blizzard out West,” said Carolyn. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we did have sledding, next week anyhow?”

Betty explained to Janet and Sue what she had mentioned before, that the winters were considerably more mild here than their own and that everybody rejoiced when there were winter sports, making the most of them; but none of the three thought of any particular good time as on its way to them because of this unexpected snow. Soon came the pretty refreshments, when all the girls laid aside their work to enjoy them.

They were asked to go into another room, apparently a breakfast room, or a dining room on a small scale, Betty thought, where a round table was set for them. There a tiny turkey, which was a container for candy or nuts, stood at each place, connected with the central lights overhead by a gay ribbon. Betty’s place card bore an Indian on snowshoes, a wild turkey over one shoulder and a bow in one hand.

“I ’spect there’s some turkey in this ‘chicken salad,’ don’t you, Betty?” said Janet next to her.

“Carolyn always has such lovely things,” replied Betty, though she had been entertained there but once before. But this was perfect for an “afternoon tea.” Instead of tea they drank cocoa, however, and last they were served to tiny ice-cream roses and delicious little cakes with pink, white or chocolate frosting.

“I’ve done nothing but eat good things since I came to this city,” Sue declared after they came home, “and we’ve had enough different kinds of fun to last all winter! No, thank you, Mrs. Lee, I don’t believe we can eat a speck of supper, or dinner, whichever you call it here.”

“We might sit down with them, girls,” Betty suggested, “for we didn’t really have a heavy meal at Carolyn’s!”

But Betty had scarcely gotten seated at the home dinner table than she rose to answer the telephone. “Oh, who is it? I can’t quite understand. The telephone buzzes a little. Now I get it–oh, yes, Chet! Honestly? Why, yes, that would be great fun. I don’t know, though.”

Betty listened a little. “Wait a minute. I’ll have to ask Mother and see what the girls say. Please hold the ’phone a minute.”

The telephone was in the hall and Betty rushed around through the living room to where the family were. “Mother!” she began excitedly, “that was Chet Dorrance and he wants to know if we girls can go bob-sled riding tonight. It’s freezing like everything and the boys have got water poured on some hill–this afternoon, you know, and the snow all packed down!”

“What boys are going and what hill is it, Betty?” inquired her father.

“Chet said that he and Chauncey Allen and Budd LeRoy would come after us. We can take the car, the street-car, he said, and get off almost right at the hill, anyhow the place where it is, one of the houses, I suppose, maybe a place like Carolyn’s.”

“Betty, I can’t have you start in to go out with the boys in the evening.”

“But this isn’t like that, Mother. It’s a big crowd, not so very big perhaps, but at least two bob-sleds and we take turns.”

“Sure the hill doesn’t deposit you near some car line or shoot you across one? I saw a kiddie nearly killed this afternoon shooting across a road, down hill, on his sled.” Mr. Lee was interposing this remark.

Betty looked worried. “Chet is waiting on the line, Mother. Oh, I do want to go!”

“Suppose I talk to him, then, Betty,” suggested Mrs. Lee. “I don’t want to keep you from any pleasure, but I want to make sure that it is safe, you know. Yes, a crowd to enjoy the sport is all right if they are careful boys, not reckless.”

“You met them all here, Mother.”

“Yes.” Mrs. Lee was on her way to the hall.

“This is Betty’s mother speaking,” she said, taking the receiver. “Betty is anxious to accept your kind invitation, but I want to inquire about the safety of the sport. Where is the hill located and just what are you going to do?”

“Aw, Mother’ll spoil it all, Betty,” said Dick, who was listening, while Betty stood half-way between hall and the dining room double doors. Betty frowned and shook her head at her brother, who passed his plate for a second helping of meat and potato. Dick was going out himself with his sled and the hill had been passed upon by his father, though Dick in his peregrinations did not always ask permission. That was one of Mr. Lee’s little worries for fear that in a city he could not so easily know just where his son was spending his leisure hours or whether his company was all that it should be. In the country town there was just as much danger of contamination, but they knew so well what was to be avoided and what companions were safe and who were unsafe.

Mother, however, had not “spoiled it all.” She came back smiling and put her arm about Betty to lead her in the room with her. “Chet explained it all satisfactorily, and I am rather glad to know that Ted Dorrance and a group of the older high school boys and girls will be there. There is a ‘sled load,’ I understand, though that used to mean a different sort of sled, in the country. Moreover, it is on the Dorrance place, and it may be that you can be called for. I think myself that the street car is safer, however, and so I told him.”

“Mother!” exclaimed Betty, half embarrassed.

“Don’t worry, child. Parents have to manage some of these things. I liked Chet and he is not offended. It is most likely that his own parents have a few remarks to make occasionally. Chet is not old enough to drive a car, Betty.”

“Well, I’m obliged to you anyway, Mother, for letting us go. Did you ring off?”

“Yes, I never thought that Chet might like to speak to you again.”

“Your mother isn’t yet used to having young men ring up and talk to her daughter,” mischievously said Mr. Lee.

“And I hope that I shall not get used to it for some time,” firmly replied his wife. “Betty’s not going to run around regardless; and I’m so sure of her that I know she does not want to do it either.”

“I’m perfectly willing to wait until I grow up a little more,” said Betty. “But this is different.”

“Yes, this is different.”

It was different. Betty never forgot this first winter fun of her freshman year, the night so beautiful, the snow so white, the little company so gay. Moonlight made the most of the scene. It was the first time that Betty had seen the Dorrance place, rather the house, which stood back, facing a road which was marked “Private” and wound around a short ascent to where two houses were built, some distance apart, upon a hill in a thick grove of trees. But the hill began to descend where the houses were and only the trees and chimneys could be seen from the main road where ran the street cars. A path had been well cleared and machines had gone over the road since the snow had fallen. Escorted by the three boys, the three girls ascended the hill after leaving the street car and heard, while they talked, the merry laughter of a group just preceding them.

“So this is where you live, Chet,” said Janet, by this time well acquainted, for she and Chet had pulled taffy together and joked each other while they did it.

“Yes; it’s a bit of a climb for some folks, but my mother uses the car most of the time and I suppose it isn’t more than a good square’s walk to the house. The hill we’re going to slide on is the other side of the house. You see there’s really a ravine there, but this hill is wide and the way the ground slopes and humps around it makes a good long hill of it. We’ve got it as slick as can be and we’ll shoot across a narrow brook at the foot. It’s good and frozen tonight and getting colder. You’ll all come in the house and meet Mother first. But we’re going to make a big bonfire to get warm by and Louise, Ted’s girl, you know, says we can roast marshmallows the same as if it were summer.”

“So this is Betty Lee,” said pretty Mrs. Dorrance, holding Betty’s hand a trifle longer, as she was the last girl of the group. “Both Ted and Chet have spoken of you. I am glad to meet you and I hope that my boys can give all you girls a good time tonight. I’ve cautioned them to be careful of you.”

“Now, Mother!” cried Chet. “You don’t understand. Of course we’ll take care of them, but they’re pretty independent, too, and they’ll tell us if they don’t want to do anything, at least Louise will tell Ted!”

“I hope so.”

“We want to do what everybody does,” gently said Betty, “and I’m sure the boys know about the hill and everything, don’t they, Mrs. Dorrance?”

“I hope so,” whimsically replied Mrs. Dorrance, who was timid about sports of all sorts, though she rather liked this confidence in her boys.

Then the fun began. The girls and boys in warm sweaters and woollen caps gathered about the bob sleds at the top of the hill. One with Ted guiding and full of the older ones went first, down, down around, up a little, swooping down till it was lost to view and only the little squeals and shrieks of excitement or a whoop from some boy reached Betty’s ears.

“I’ll let you take this one down, Budd,” said Chet. “Budd’s an expert, girls. Now not too many. We’ve another right here and I’ll take that first. Chauncey, watch how I take that curve and you can take it down next time. Come on, Betty, as soon as Budd’s sled goes and rounds the curve all right we’ll start, I think.”

Shortly Betty found herself flying among the shadows, through patches of moonlight, around the breath-taking curve, shooting down a straight, steep descent, holding tight, breathing in the fresh, frosty air, happy as a bird. Again and again they climbed and descended till they were tired and lit the great pile prepared by the boys in an open space. The flames shot up, lighting the gay colors of the sweaters and coats, the bright young faces and the snow man that some one started to build while marshmallows were really being toasted. A snowball fight or two livened the scene for a little, and oh, how surprised they all were, when some one looked at a watch in the firelight and announced that it was getting late.

“Don’t put on any more wood, boys,” said Louise Madison. “I’ve only been able to toast anything in this one corner as it is; and if it is as late as that we’ll go in, for Mrs. Dorrance will be calling us.”

As if the hour had been noted at just the right time, some one came running out of the house to tell the company that refreshments were ready–and such funny ones, ordered by the boys, no doubt, the two Dorrance boys that were hosts. There were hot tea and bottles of pop, hot “wieners” and fresh buns to put them in, hot beans in tomato sauce, pickles, real spiced home-made ones, and for dessert what Dick always called “Wiggle,” jello or a kindred article, this time holding an assortment of fresh fruit together and served on a plate with an immense piece of frosted spice cake.

Somebody, the cook, Betty supposed, stood behind a long table by which they were to pass in cafeteria style, each taking, as the cook indicated, plate and silver and being served to the variety of foods by Chet and Ted, who with laughing faces had put on a white paper cap and a white apron. These the two boys kept on as they followed the rest into the dining room, to which a maid beckoned them. But all helpers disappeared at once. Mrs. Dorrance only looked in upon them to see that they were happy, and perhaps to assure Louise that the chaperon was doing her duty in being about. Jokes and fun and more hot things offered by Chet and Ted completed the evening’s enjoyment.

“It’s too much for you to go home with us, boys,” said Betty, rather thinking that she made a “social blunder” by saying so, but feeling that if they put her on the car she could see herself and her friends home.

“Couldn’t think of anything else,” replied Chet, guiding Janet down the rather slippery hill at the front. “You don’t know how late and dark it will be when we get off the car near your house. The moon’s setting now, or else there’s a cloud or two. Wouldn’t it be great if we kept on having snow!”

“But dear sakes,” said Betty, “we’ll be in school and have to study!”

“Not to hurt,” remarked Chauncey Allen.