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Page 88
"We weren't provided for quite so long a siege, but I was coming over to
telephone from your house this morning. It's a great storm, isn't it? I
think it's fun, for it's my first experience. Do tell your boys to come
over and make a snow fort or something in my front yard."
"They'll be delighted, when the storm stops. There's no use making forts
now, you know."
"No, I didn't know. I was prepared to go out this morning and play with
them."
Macauley looked at her. "Not in that dress, I hope," he observed,
bluntly. "It beats me, the way women wear their thinnest clothes in the
coldest weather. I wonder how I'd feel with the kind of rig you're
wearing. And it's none too warm here, it strikes me, if you don't mind my
saying it, in spite of that good-looking fire."
"The room warms rather slowly in this extreme weather," Charlotte
admitted. She was standing close to the fire, in the unquestionably
summerlike dress of the blue cotton she chose for all her working frocks.
With its low rolling collar and short sleeves it certainly did not
suggest comfort. If Macauley had suspected that beneath it was no
compensating protection, he would have been considerably more concerned
than he was. His wife was accustomed to explain to him, when he
criticised the inadequacy of her attire, that she fully made up for it by
some extra, hidden warmth of clothing. And when he complained that anyhow
she didn't look warm she invariably replied that nothing could be more
deceiving than looks.
He walked over to the windows. They were rattling stormily with each gust
of the tempest raging outside, and as he held his hand at their edges he
could feel all the winds of heaven raging in.
"Jupiter!" he exclaimed. "No wonder you're cold. That stage fire of yours
can't warm all outdoors. I'll send for some window strips and nail you
up."
"Please don't bother, Mr. Macauley. I am going to stuff them with cotton
myself, and that will do quite well. If you will be so kind as to
telephone this order to the grocery for me I shall be grateful, though
I hardly see how the delivery wagons can get about."
He took the paper she handed him, and absently, after the manner of the
householder, his eyes scanned it.
"Why, you want to order in larger lots than these!" he exclaimed. Then,
as he looked up and saw her smiling without reply, he reddened and
stammered hastily: "I beg your pardon; I looked without thinking. But,
if you don't mind my advising you, I'd say double each of these items,
at least; it's economy in the end. And--where's the meat order? Have you
forgotten?"
"There are eggs on the grocery list," said Charlotte, a little flame of
colour rising in her own cheek. "Granny prefers those. But you may double
each item, if you wish. Probably you don't realize that I'm not ordering
for a family like yours, and things spoil quickly when kept in the
kitchen, as we keep ours."
"Of course you know your own affairs," mumbled Macauley, in some
embarrassment. "But, if you'd heard R.P. Burns charging me to look after
you as if you belonged to me, you'd pardon my impertinence."
"I appreciate your interest," Charlotte assured him, lightly. "But I'm
really enjoying the new experience of this storm and don't mind a bit how
long it lasts. Granny is warm as can be upstairs with her little stove,
and as she can't hear the wind howl her spirits aren't in the least
depressed. I admit I don't just love to hear the wind howl. If it would
be still about it I should like to see the snow bury my whole front lawn
three feet deep."
"I'm glad you take it that way. Martha insists that such storms are very
depressing,--principally, I believe, because they keep her from running
in to see her neighbours. Well, I must be off. I'll send the youngsters
over to shovel a path to your front door; I had to wallow through
myself."
He went away, and the storm raged on. The boys did not come over; their
labours would have been of small avail if they had worked never so
valiantly, for the drifts formed faster than they could have been
shovelled away. Night fell with Nature still unappeased, and the wind,
contrary to the prediction of the grocer's boy, when in the late
afternoon he fought his way in with his basket of supplies, did not
go down with the sun.
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