Part 2

The man finally plucked up his courage, smiling to himself at his own embarrassment, and asked the evident owner of the first toboggan why he didn’t build a slide.

“Dunno,” said that young person. “What’s a slide?”

“You don’t know what a slide is?” exclaimed Wallace, glad to see that his scorn made an evident impression. “The only real way to get speed and distance out of a toboggan is to have a slide. You use up half your speed now by the friction of steering. All you’ve got to do is to make two banks of snow a couple of feet apart, and keep the sleds out. Then the chute between the banks will get almost glare ice, you won’t have to bother to steer, and you can go a mile a minute clear to the other end of the pasture.”

“Gee, let’s build one, Joe,” exclaimed the second small boy.

“Ain’t got no shovel,” said the first.

“If you’ll bring shovels tomorrow afternoon, I’ll help you,” said Wallace.

“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” the boy replied, with some scorn.

“So it is, I forgot,” Wallace laughed. “Well, how about nine o’clock tomorrow morning, then?”

“You’re on, Judge,” said Joe, easily, as he kicked the toboggan around to face down the slope. “Want to try a ride?”

Wallace sat down on the cushionless toboggan, between the two boys, and with a yell of warning they started off. The additional weight in the centre made the task of steering too much for the helmsman. Two-thirds of the way down the toboggan began to pivot, skidded madly to the left, upset, and rolled all three riders over and over in the snow. They picked themselves up, laughing, while other coasters shouted and jeered. The man’s wrists and neck were full of snow. His nose was scratched by a piece of crust. His eyes were weeping. But he laughed as he rose. “That won’t happen when we get the slide,” he said.

“Ho, that’s fun,” the owner of the toboggan answered. “Want to try it again?”

“I think I’ll wait till morning,” said Wallace. “Good-bye till tomorrow.”

“So long,” said the boys, turning from him at once, as if he no longer existed.

He went back to the road, digging snow out of his neck and sleeves, and feeling rather sore and wrenched. In front of the house with the Doric porch he now observed a toboggan standing. The girl was nowhere visible, but the toboggan was a hopeful possibility! He went back to the hotel and unpacked his trunk while the early twilight came on and his wood fire sparkled cheerfully. He felt cheerful again himself now, and sleepy with the unaccustomed country air, and pleasantly tired and hungry. Supper was announced by a big bell clanged in the lower hall, and it was an excellent meal, with real maple syrup to pour on piping hot griddle cakes. Still sleepier and more contented, Wallace went back to his room to read, nodded over the pages in front of his fire, and finally decided to go to bed at the unheard-of hour of nine. After he had undressed and turned out the light, he suddenly became aware of moonlight outside. Going to the window, he saw it gleaming palely on the white roof of the church. The village street was still and almost deserted. The stores were closed. Save for a distant sleighbell, there was hardly a sound. He opened the window and sent his breath steaming out into the night, and then sucked back a great lungful of the sweet, stinging cold air. With a final glance at the white roof sleeping in the moonlight, he tumbled into bed, as the clock solemnly boomed nine, and almost before the last reverberation had died away into silence, he was asleep.

He was awakened in the morning by the clangor of the breakfast bell, breaking strangely in upon his dreams, and for several moments he lay in bed enjoying the odd sensation of sunshine in his chamber and comparative quiet in the outside world. He heard sleighbells in the village street, and the voice of somebody saying “good mornin’” to somebody else, with the old Yankee nasal inflection, which was like forgotten music to his ear. At 8.30 he was through his breakfast, and set forth to find a snow shovel and a toboggan. There were plenty of shovels, but only one toboggan in the store.

“Thet’s the last one,” said the storekeeper. “Kinder thought I warn’t goin’ ter sell it, seein’ it’s six dollars. The rest wuz three an’ four. Would you like the cushion, too? Kinder absorbs the shocks!”

Wallace took the cushion, too, and set out down the main street dragging his new purchase and feeling rather sheepish. Nobody, however, paid much attention to him. He looked for the girl at the house behind the evergreens, but she was not visible. The toboggan was still standing beside the Doric porch. He passed on, vaguely disappointed, and was soon at the hillside. His two friends of yesterday were already there, and with them six other small boys, with a total of four snow shovels. Evidently the word had gone forth that untoward events were on! Wallace was secretly pleased and rather flattered. He felt so shy with these boys that their response seemed to him a compliment.

“Good morning!” he cried. “Well, you are ahead of time. I’ll bet you don’t get to school so early.”

The boys grinned at this, looking at each other. Wallace felt more at ease.

“Well,” he said, “let’s get busy right away. Let’s build the slide somewhere so it won’t interfere with the sleds. Over here a little to the left, eh?”

The boys followed him to the left side of the slope, and under his direction they began to work.

It did not take them long to raise banks nearly two feet high halfway down the hill, but before this much was completed a score of other coasters had arrived, and come over to watch the work. One large boy, with a sled, got into the incompleted slide and came whizzing down.

“Hi, get out of that!” yelled the workers. “This is for toboggans.”

“Aw, chase yourself, I’m goin’ down it again,” said the coaster, as he came back up the hill.

“No, you’re not, is he, sir?” cried the workers.

Thus appealed to, everybody looked at Wallace, including the large boy.

That individual spoke up quickly. “I guess this hill’s as much mine as it is yours,” said he, with the characteristic aggressiveness of his type, “an’ I’ll coast where I please.”

Wallace looked at him sharply. “You are considerable of a bully, aren’t you?” he said. “Well, I’m something of a bully myself. We’ve left all of this hill to sleds except just this narrow strip, which is going to be for toboggans. Everybody who’s decent will keep out of it with sleds. Anybody who isn’t decent, who’s just mean and nasty and selfish and not thoughtful for other people, will have me and all these eight boys to reckon with. Now, young man, go ahead and try to coast here, if you care to!”

Wallace’s voice didn’t rise above a conversational key, but he looked the bully square in the eyes, and that individual slunk off to the other side of the hill. The smaller boys looked at the man with evident admiration, and began to talk excitedly.

“Gee,” whispered Joe to Wallace, “Jim never got a lacin’ down like that before! I’ll bet he comes and spoils the slide tonight, though.”

“When we get it done,” said the man, “we’ll offer to take him down it on a toboggan. That’s the way to pull his teeth. He’ll be ashamed then, maybe.”

No sooner had he spoken, than something made him turn. Standing close behind him was the girl of yesterday. In the excitement, she had come up the hill without his seeing her. She was dressed in a white angora wool cap, a white angora sweater, and a short, heavy skirt, with heavy knee boots below it. She held a toboggan rope in her hand, and beside her stood a yellow-haired youngster of six, with cheeks like two ripe apples. She was looking at Wallace. He unconsciously smiled and half nodded as his gaze met hers. She spoke, rather to all the boys than to him.

“That’s right,” she said, “you scorch Jim’s head with coals of fire and maybe it will do him good. Some of these boys are in my Sunday School class,” she added more directly to Wallace, “so I’ll just get a day ahead with the lesson!”

The boys all laughed at this and Wallace said, “That’s right. _Carpe diem_, in a new sense!”

Then he reluctantly turned back to the slide. Presently he saw the girl and her small charge tobogganing down the hills. He sent two of his own “gang,” as he called them, down the slide to see how it worked, and set the rest to completing the bottom part. It was soon done, and with a shout all the eight boys piled up to the top, crowded aboard the toboggans, and one after another went yelling down. After a few trips the bottom was packed smooth, and the coasters scooted clean across the pasture at the bottom to the very road.

“Gee, this is great!” cried one of them.

“You bet, best we ever had!” shouted another.

Wallace looked along the hilltop and saw the girl. “Run and tell your teacher, Joe, that the slide is for everybody who has a toboggan,” he said. “Is that her son with her?”

“Ho, she’s Miss Woodford. That’s her sister’s kid,” said Joe, scampering off, while Wallace felt a secret relief and a glow of pleasure.

Joe returned with the girl and two other younger girls as well, who had a toboggan.

“We built the slide for everybody,” said Wallace to Miss Woodford. “It’s for the toboggans, so they won’t have to be steered. The sides make it perfectly safe even for children. Try it.”

“It’s very nice of you,” the girl smiled. “Our boys need a man to direct their play.”

“I fear I’m a poor hand, and a very inexperienced one,” Wallace answered. “But I’m having a good time.”

“Doubtless that is why the boys are,” she replied, as she tucked her skirts around her trim boot-legs, told her little nephew to hang on tight, and Wallace pushed them over the brim.

The slide grew more and more slippery, and the fun more and more furious. Half the coasters came over to watch, or to beg for rides. Even Jim, the bully, cast envious eyes toward the slide. “Now’s a good time,” said Wallace, to a couple of boys. “Go over and offer Jim a ride.”

“You do it, Joe,” said one of the boys.

“No, you do it,” said Joe.

“What’s the matter, are you afraid?” said the man. “You just show him once you’re not afraid of him, and he’ll come down off his high horse.”

“Ho, I ain’t afraid!” cried Joe, going at once toward the bully.

“Come on and try the slide on my toboggan, Jim,” the rest heard him saying.

Jim scowled and hung back for a moment, but his curiosity got the better of him, and he came.

“Take my toboggan, Joe,” said Wallace; “it’s bigger than yours.”

Joe took it, Jim the bully and another boy and two girls piled on, and went screaming down the slide. The man smiled, and turned to meet the smile of Miss Woodford.

“Won’t you try mine?” she said.

He put her on the front, and held the small nephew between them. That young person was very solemn. Wallace could feel the muscles of his little arms tighten as he gripped the toboggan rails. His little face was set, his lips parted, his yellow hair blown about his temples from under his cap. He was deliciously frightened by the speed. As they came to rest at the bottom, however, he automatically relaxed, and let out a bottled-up yell.

“Having a good time, son?” asked Wallace, as a small hand grasped the rope beside his arm.

“My-name’s-Albert-Andrew-Goodwin,” the young person replied, all in one gasping breath. “I-think-this-slide’s-the-bestest-fun-I-ever-had.”

Wallace laughed, and so did the girl.

“My name is Wallace Miller and I quite agree with you,” he answered.

“My name is Nora Woodford, and I’m not inclined to present a minority report,” the girl smiled.

“What’s that, Auntie Nora, that thing you just said?” demanded Albert Andrew Goodwin.

“It’s my way of saying the slide is lots of fun,” she replied.

“Why don’t you just say it, then?” the boy asked.

Again the grown-ups laughed, and Wallace felt a curious thrill through his glove as the little hand beside his on the toboggan rope pressed close against his fingers.

At the top the small fellow took actual hold of his hand, with a most engaging smile, and demanded that he steer them down again. This time Albert sat at the front, and Wallace grasped the rails at either side of the girl, to hold her on, while she put protecting hands about her nephew. The slide was already like glass, and it was developing a few spots where the banks were not quite true and the toboggans were thrown from one side to the other. Two-thirds of the way down little Albert was whipped so sharply to the left that he let go of the rail. His aunt, with a scream, grabbed him hard, and the shift in her weight was more than Wallace could counteract at the speed they were traveling. The toboggan rode madly up the bank at an oblique angle and shot over on the other side, burying its nose in a drift and sending all three riders overboard in a complete header. Wallace was on his feet in a second, and had his arm about the girl, lifting her, for he saw that the child must be underneath.

“Are you hurt?” he cried.

“No, but Albert, quick!” she gasped.

Nothing of Albert was visible save his legs. His head and body had completely disappeared. The legs were quite still, and something inside of Wallace went down to his boots with the sickening lurch of a badly run elevator. He put his hands through the snow, grasped the body, and lifted it up. It came up looking like a small snowman, wabbled in his grasp, straightened itself, and suddenly emitted a wail.

“Oh, where are you hurt?” cried the girl, kneeling beside the child and dabbing the snow from his face and eyes.

Albert blinked the water from his vision, meditatively lifted first one foot and then the other, stopped crying, and said, “Why, I ain’t!”

The change was so comically sudden that both man and girl laughed in nervous relief.

“Are you sure?” she urged.

“Sure,” he replied stoutly. “Ho, that wa’n’t nothing!”

Again Wallace helped the girl to her feet. “And you, are _you_ sure?” he asked solicitously.

“I’m all right,” she said. “I had Albert to land on. You’re a fine cushion, Albert.”

“And I had both of you,” Wallace laughed. “It was a case of the women and children first, with a vengeance! Let me brush you.”

As he stooped to do so, all three were suddenly aware of how snow-bepowdered they were, and laughed again, while the others on the hill, who had gathered about, laughed with them.

“Thank heaven we can laugh!” Wallace whispered. “When I saw those two little leggings so still in the snow I seemed to grow ten years older.”

The girl looked into his face, and shuddered, without speaking. It was as though they had touched hands across a sudden gulf. He brushed the snow from her clothes as best he could, and then he spanked it off Albert, and on an impulse strange to him put his arms about the little fellow and gave him a hug. His eyes looked up to meet those of the girl, which were regarding him oddly.

“I didn’t know before that I liked kids,” he said, as if in apology.

“You do. I’m sure,” she smiled.

Before any more toboggans were allowed on the slide, Wallace and his gang made the banks higher and straighter at the dangerous points, and thus corrected the chute held like a vise. The coasters were soon whizzing down again.

But before they could start back, the town clock struck twelve.

“Oh, gee, dinner time!” cried Joe. “I’d rather slide.”

“The slide will be here this afternoon,” Wallace laughed. “You go home to dinner before your mother gets after you, Joe!”

The rest grinned at Joe, and followed Wallace and Miss Woodford out of the field. It was a considerable procession which marched up the road. Little Albert refused his aunt’s hand, proudly insisting on tugging his own toboggan, and chattering of his adventure. Half a dozen small boys disputed for the right to drag Wallace’s. Another boy carried his snow shovel. Even the bully was in the group.

The girl looked back, laughing. “I believe you are the Pied Piper,” she said.

“If I should confess to you,” he answered, “that this morning I was afraid of these boys, as timid as a child before them, maybe you wouldn’t believe me. But I’m not used to kids.”

She again darted an odd look of curiosity at him. “Are you visiting in town?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know a soul here. I’m at the Mansion House. I just came--saw the name North Topsville on the time table and liked it. I’m hunting for Christmas.”

Once more she looked at him. “That shouldn’t be hard to find. Christmas is nearly everywhere, isn’t it?”

Wallace shook his head. “I’ve not met Christmas personally in a decade, at least,” he answered.

The girl paused in front of the house amid the evergreens. “I think we can introduce it to you here,” she said, with a bright smile. “We keep quite a supply on hand in Topsville.”

Then she nodded to him, and to the children, and turned up the path. The bully touched his cap.

“Boys,” said Wallace, “don’t you know what to do when a lady meets you, or leaves you? What is it, Joe?”

Joe turned red. “Touch yer cap,” he said.

“Exactly,” said Wallace, “and Jim, here, was the only boy who did it. Good for you, Jim!”

It was Jim’s turn to color--with pleasure as well as embarrassment. The other boys looked at him. The villain of the early morning had now become the hero! They scattered their several ways in some perplexity, while Wallace walked on to his dinner, every nerve tingling with the excitement of the morning, the unusual contact with small boys, the thrill of little Albert’s touch, his warm baby arms and hand, the sudden surge of horror at the thought of injury to him, the feeling of intimacy which followed the accident, the perfume of the girl’s hair, her bright, friendly smile, the whole atmosphere of naïve enjoyment. It wasn’t much like his mornings in New York, he reflected. And what an appetite he had!

But he discovered after dinner that he was tired, that the muscles of his legs ached from climbing the hill, that his hands were chapped and his face smarted. Indolence stole over him, and he curled up before the fire in his room and read a book, until the light began to fail. Then he went out once more, into the cold twilight, and his feet led him up the street to the house with the Doric porch. He told himself that he must inquire if Albert were really unhurt. Almost at the gate he met Miss Woodford, Albert, and several of the boys, which answered his unspoken question.

“Hi, where were you this after’?” called Joe. “Gee, the slide’s so slippery now it’s most ice!”

“Yes, an’ I mos’ fell off again twice!” cried little Albert Andrew Goodwin, running up to him and thrusting a tiny hand into his.

“Did you?” cried Wallace. “Well, now you see why you’ve got to hang on tight, all right.”

The other boys moved on, and Joe led them in touching his cap to the girl.

(“That’s right, Joe,” whispered Wallace, as the boy passed him.)

Miss Woodford acknowledged the salute with a bright smile and a “Good night.” The little chap kept fast hold of Wallace’s hand.

“I gotta snow man in the back yard. You come ’n see it,” he pleaded, tugging at his new friend’s fingers.

Wallace laughed, a little embarrassed. “I guess not today, Albert,” he said. “It’s bedtime for little boys and snow men.”

“Ho, snow men don’t go to bed at all, an’ I don’t go till seven!” cried Albert. “Please tell him to come, Auntie Nora.”

“You’ve asked him, dear,” said Auntie Nora, with a smile. “I’m sure he’ll come for you if anybody.”

Wallace looked at her, and her eyes met his for a second and did not tell him to refuse, so with Albert’s hand still tugging at his, he was taken up the path between the evergreens, around the big, square house, into a large garden space, where a snow man stood, with lumps of coal for eyes.

“Why, how do you do, Mr. I. C. Snow!” cried Wallace, pretending to shake hands. “I am glad to see you looking so well. I trust you don’t find this weather too cold for you?”

Albert shouted with glee. “Say it again!” he cried.

Wallace put his ear to the snow man’s mouth, and shook his head gravely. “Oh, that’s very sad!” he said. “Very sad!”

“What does he say?” Albert asked, crowding close.

“He says he’s got such a cold from not wearing a hat that he’s lost his voice,” Wallace answered.

The boy looked solemnly puzzled for a second, and then burst into shouts of laughter.

“Ain’t he funny, Auntie Nora?” he demanded. “The snow man don’t really talk.”

“_What?_” cried Wallace. “Well, I guess you never listened very close!”

“I like you,” said Albert suddenly, grabbing his hand again. “Come in an’ see my blocks.”

“Do,” added the girl, noting Wallace’s hesitancy; “we will have some tea.”

“You are very kind,” Wallace answered, “but I’m afraid our little friend is forcing your hospitality.”

“We always have tea at this time,” she smiled. Her eyes were friendly. In her white cap and sweater, her cheeks red with a day in the open, her hair curling out rebelliously about her temples, she was a temptation hard to resist. The warm little hand was tugging at his fingers. But Wallace managed to say, “Another time, sonny,” and made his way to the street.

The next morning he debated the propriety of going to church. He had not gone to church for so many years that the idea was invested with novelty. Yet he knew that he was going in reality to see the girl again, and it seemed hardly an appropriate motive. However, he went!

A farmer sat directly in front of him, with a sunburned neck like wrinkled leather, rising above a rubber collar. Wallace thought of his own grandfather, who had been a Yankee farmer, too. The whole congregation, and the bare meeting house with its gallery on three sides and its lofty pulpit reached by a winding stair, reminded him of his childhood. He saw Miss Woodford in the choir. She wore black furs, which became her as much as white. Presently she sang a solo, and her voice was sweet and quite evidently trained. Wallace found himself suddenly thrilled by it, as he used to be years ago by the voices of those he loved, and long after the congregation had rustled to silence and the minister had begun to preach, he sat with his eyes on the choir, in a delicious revery.

When the sermon was over, and the congregation had sung the closing hymn and bowed for the benediction, there was an immediate outpouring from the pews and the hum of greetings. This was the social hour of the week. The minister came down from the pulpit, exchanging salutations. Children came running in on their way to Sunday School in the vestry. Neighbors chatted in groups. Before Wallace had fairly left his pew, a farmer in starched best was grasping him by the hand, and hoping he would come again. The minister came up and greeted him. A moment later he saw Miss Woodford drawing near. She put out her hand. “Good morning,” she said. Then, turning to the minister, she added, “Mr. Miller taught some of my boys in one day to do what I’ve not been able to teach them in a year--to touch their hats. I really think you ought to give him a Sunday School class.”

“Good gracious!” gasped Wallace, with such evidently genuine amaze that the others laughed.

“I should be delighted to get a man into the Sunday School,” said the minister. “Who knows, we might start up some Boy Scout work!”

“Mr. Miller is just the man,” said the girl, with a twinkle.

“I don’t think this is fair of you, Miss Woodford,” Wallace put in. “For all you know, I’m a heathen--maybe the Pied Piper, as you suggested.”

“The Pied Piper would have made an excellent scout master,” the minister smiled. “Well, Mr. Miller, if you stay in North Topsville long, we shall hope to catch you yet.”

He moved on, leaving the two young people together. A second woman, in black, drew near, a few years older than Miss Woodford. “May I introduce the mother of your friend Albert--my sister, Mrs. Goodwin,” said the girl.