Elizabeth Ann, running to keep up with Catherine, felt almost cheerful. No matter if they were late—Catherine was going to school. She wasn’t going to turn around and go home, as Roger has said she would.

“I think Roger would like her, if only Catherine would be nicer to him,” thought Elizabeth Ann, her cheeks bright red from running against the wind. “Oh, dear, I’m out of breath—and it’s snowing again!”

Sure enough, the white flakes were whirling around them and the gray sky seemed to be pressing in upon them.

“I hate snow,” said Catherine, who could not be said to look forward to the winter. “I like the summer but I hate winter.”

She was out of breath, too, now and had to walk more slowly. When they gained the main road, they amused themselves by walking in the broad treads, like ribbon bands, that the bus wheels had left marked on the snow.

“Perhaps we’ll get a lift,” said Roger, when they had walked perhaps half a mile.

“No we won’t,” contradicted Catherine. “Everyone has gone to the creamery. Any wagons or cars that pass us will be going toward home.”

Elizabeth Ann had to admit that she was right. Within the next ten minutes four wagons passed them, but they were all headed in the wrong direction. The empty milk cans, rattling in the back of the wagons showed that their drivers had been to the creamery in Gardner and were now going home.

Catherine stopped without warning when they came to a mail box fastened to a stump of a pine tree.

“My second cousin lives here,” she announced. “I’m going to see her. I can stay at her house till afternoon and then go home. I don’t feel well and I don’t think I ought to walk all that distance to school.” “What will your mother say?” asked Elizabeth Ann, quite horrified.

“Oh, my mother won’t care. When I tell her I stayed with Cousin Betty, Mother will write me an absence excuse,” Catherine declared. “Don’t you want to come, too? We can play in the big barn.”

“No, I couldn’t,” said Elizabeth Ann hastily. “Uncle Hiram wouldn’t like it. Would he, Roger?”

“Of course he wouldn’t—for pity’s sake do hurry, Elizabeth Ann,” Roger urged her.

“Ain’t we late enough now, without arguing about staying to play in anybody’s barn?”

“I didn’t ask you, Roger Calendar,” called Catherine, as Elizabeth Ann hastened after Roger who was already moving down the road. “I wouldn’t ask you to play in my cousin’s barn; you might leave her corncrib door open.”

Elizabeth glanced timidly at Roger as they hurried along.

“You’re not mad, Roger, are you?” she ventured presently.

“I haven’t time to be mad,” said Roger. “I told you Catherine wouldn’t go to school; that’s why Dave and all of us hate to see you making a monkey of yourself for a girl like that. We’re going to be good and late for school.”

Elizabeth Ann was hurrying now to keep up with him.

“I’m sorry you waited,” she panted. “You didn’t have to wait, Roger. And Catherine is mean to say things to you the way she does.”

“I’m used to that,” said Roger. “Say, Elizabeth Ann, perhaps I can find a short cut; wouldn’t it be fun if we should get to school on time, after all?”

Elizabeth Ann beamed at the idea. She did so hate to be late, and she didn’t want all the pupils to stare at her when she and Roger came in, and wonder where Catherine was. If they could get to school at the usual time, it would be the other boys and girls who would be surprised.

“I’m not exactly sure, but I think there is a road that goes across behind a piece of woods,” said Roger. “If it’s the one I think it is, it will bring us out on one side of the school building. The only trouble is, I don’t think any teams go through it in winter and it may be drifted.”

“It hasn’t snowed much yet,” Elizabeth Ann declared cheerfully. “And I think it’s going to stop now.”

She squinted at the sky, as she had seen Uncle Hiram do, and the wet white flakes fell into her eyes and down the collar of her coat. It was snowing steadily and there were no signs whatever that it meant to stop any time soon.

“Well, we can try the short road, at least,” said Roger. “We turn off here. Are you warm enough, Elizabeth Ann?”

“Oh, my, yes,” that small girl assured him. “Only don’t walk quite so fast, please Roger; my knees won’t stretch only just so far.”

“I’ll walk the way you want to,” promised Roger. “I forgot you can’t walk as fast as a boy. Want me to carry your lunch?”

Roger had forgotten all about the two small books and the lunch box Elizabeth Ann carried, till this moment. He wasn’t very used to girls, anyway, and he was rather apt to let them wait on themselves. Now, however, he took Elizabeth Ann’s things and that left her hands free. She could put them into the two big flannel-lined pockets of her coat and let them both get warm at once.

The road down which Roger had turned apparently was not used at all in the winter. Not a single track marked the whiteness of the snow that covered it. The underbrush of the woods which bordered it on either side showed gleaming red berries here and there and Elizabeth Ann saw a few birds picking at the berries, but they did not seem to think they were very good.

“Perhaps they’re sour,” said Elizabeth Ann aloud.

She was walking behind Roger, stepping into the footprints his rubber boots left. And she noticed that the heel of one of his boots seemed to be leaking.

“Roger, did you know your boot leaks?” she asked, before she stopped to think.

Roger nodded, without turning.

“They’re old,” he said. “I may get a new pair for Christmas. But the Bostwicks are so cross about the cow, I may not get anything for Christmas this year.”

“I don’t think you left the corncrib door open,” said Elizabeth Ann for the fiftieth time.

“I’d tell you if I had really left it open,” Roger answered. “I know I didn’t. But there’s no way to prove it.”

He tramped on moodily, and Elizabeth Ann, who found it hard going through the soft sticky snow, began to feel tired. She didn’t want to bother Roger, but at last she thought she must ask a question.

“What time do you suppose it is, Roger?” she asked. “Is it much further to the piece of woods you remember?”

Roger stopped and looked at her anxiously.

“Bet you’re getting tired,” he said. “I’ll tell you what, Elizabeth Ann; we’ll sit down on this log and eat our lunches. That will give us a little rest. We’re late now—I’m sure of it—and fifteen minutes won’t make any difference.”

He brushed the snow off a large log at the side of the road and Elizabeth Ann sat down. She was warm enough, but she was very tired. She opened her lunch box and held it out to Roger.

“No thanks,” he said gruffly, “I have my own.”

He took two apples out of the paper bag he had carried in his pocket.

“You have to eat some of mine,” Elizabeth Ann insisted. “Aunt Grace always puts up some for me to pass to the other girls. She gives Doris extra sandwiches, too. These are minced chicken, Roger.”

“Will you eat one of my apples then?” demanded Roger, looking at the sandwiches hungrily.

Elizabeth Ann promised and they began to eat as though breakfast had been “the day before,” Roger said. But the long walk had made them hungry, and when the sandwiches and stuffed eggs, and even Roger’s apples had disappeared, they both felt much better.

“If it would stop snowing, we could go faster,” said Roger, as they started to walk again. “It can’t be much further, Elizabeth Ann.” But it was. They walked another two miles and then Roger was forced to admit that he did not know where they were.

“I said you made a monkey out of yourself, waiting for Catherine,” he declared ruefully, “but I’m a worse monkey; here we are, goodness only knows how many miles from school—and it must be noon. I haven’t a watch, but it feels like noon to me.”

Elizabeth Ann could have cried, but she didn’t. She was so tired and worried and it began to look as though they wouldn’t get to school that day at all. But Roger was sorry enough, without seeing her cry, she thought, so she just winked her eyes a little and then said bravely:

“What’ll we do next, Roger?”

“We’ll have to go back,” said Roger slowly. “All the way back to the main road; because I’m afraid to go any further over this road. I don’t know where it leads—and it may go on for miles and miles, without passing a house.”

They turned around and went back. It seemed three times as long a journey as when they had first walked it, but the wind was no longer in their faces and that was better. But when they reached the main road, Elizabeth Ann was sure she couldn’t walk another step.

“I’m awfully sorry, Elizabeth Ann,” said Roger, looking at her anxiously. “Don’t sit down in the snow—you can’t rest now; it’s only a little further to school. You can’t sit down in wet snow, Elizabeth Ann.”

But Elizabeth Ann didn’t care where she sat. Not only was she tired, but she was sleepy. She stumbled when she walked, and she didn’t see any reason why Roger should expect to keep her walking and walking, when she was so tired.

“You go on without me,” she told him, “I’ll come after a while.”

But Roger had heard an automobile and he looked hopefully down the road.

“Here comes a car!” he cried. “I’ll ask them to take us to school. Don’t you dare sit down in the wet cold snow, Elizabeth Ann Loring!”

Roger was so eager to get someone to take Elizabeth Ann to school, before she went to sleep where she was, that he paid no attention to the car. It is doubtful whether he would have recognized it, anyway, for it was well covered with snow. But Elizabeth Ann, sleepy as she was, recognized whose voice it was that answered Roger’s eager shout and she knew both the men whose heads were thrust out of the car windows when it stopped.

“Uncle Hiram and Mr. Gould!” said Elizabeth Ann, forgetting how tired she was because of being so much surprised.