CHAPTER II

THE OPEN FIRE

A deep ditch extended along one side of the road and for it the rapidly
driven car was heading. It seemed impossible at that moment but that the
girls must witness a terrible accident.

Helen put a hand over her eyes, turned and started running back the way
they had come. Margy and Rose shrank away, clinging together, eyes wide
with horror, while the boys ran forward, shouting and gesticulating in a
vain attempt to warn the occupants of the car of their danger.

It was too late. The car careened crazily, described a sickening
semicircle in the snow of the road, and toppled drunkenly into the
ditch.

The young men excitedly followed the car over the embankment while Margy
and Rose still clung together in the center of the road, faint and sick
with horror.

Helen had turned in her headlong flight and was slowly coming back to
them.

“We had better go and see if we can’t help, too,” said Margy, in a husky
voice, tugging at her sister’s hand. “Some one may be badly hurt.”

“It will be a miracle if some one isn’t,” observed Rose, recovering her
powers of speech and action at the same moment. “Come along, girls, we
may be of some use.”

When they reached the ditch and peered fearfully over, they were treated
to a sight that made them gape with astonishment and relief.

The car, after its leap over the embankment, had turned upon its side.
In this undignified position, with wheels turned upward, it looked
peculiarly helpless and forlorn.

But the girls had no eyes for the car. They saw only the two men,
victims of the accident, who had freed themselves from the wreck and
were now standing in the snow, ruefully regarding the motor car.

“Take a team of horses to get this thing up on the road again,” the
younger of the two men remarked.

“And then we have no way of knowing it will work,” his companion
replied. “That was certainly a pretty piece of driving I did.”

“What seemed to be the matter?” asked Joe, who, with Hugh and Lloyd,
were interested bystanders.

“Everything,” replied the older man disgustedly. “In the first place, I
neglected to put the skid chains on this morning. In the second place,
that hill over there is a good deal steeper than I reckoned on. When we
once got going it wasn’t easy to stop. The tires might just about as
well have tried to get a grip on the air, as this combination ice and
snow.”

“The question before the jury now seems to be, ‘where do we go from
here——’”

“And how?” interposed Joe, with a grin.

“Exactly!” agreed the older man dryly.

They made a tour of the capsized automobile while the girls watched with
interest from the embankment. They evidently decided that nothing could
be done without help from a garage in town, for they returned presently
and clambered up the steep incline to the level of the road.

Here the two strangers introduced themselves and were introduced in turn
to the girls. The older of the two men was a Mr. Sidney Roth. The
younger made himself known as Chester Drew of New York.

“We are going to a friend’s house not very far from here,” said Helen to
the two men. “If you care to come with us, Miss Jellicoe will make you a
cup of hot tea—”

“And you can telephone the garage from there, too,” Rose chimed in.

Chester Drew, who had never taken his eyes from Rose’s face since the
introduction, seemed inclined to accept the invitation, but Mr. Roth
shook his head decidedly.

“We are very much obliged to you, young ladies,” he said. “But we really
must get back to town immediately. We will stop at the garage, send some
one out here to rescue the car, and then take the next train to New
York.”

“It is lucky you weren’t badly injured.” Margy spoke for the first time.
“When we saw you go over the embankment we were afraid to look.”

“Fools’ luck,” replied Chester Drew, grinning. “You just can’t kill some
people!”

After one more discouraged look at the wrecked car in the ditch, their
new acquaintances took leave of the young folks and continued down the
snow-covered road in the direction of the town.

“I wish they had come on with us to Miss Jessica’s,” worried Helen.
“Even though no bones were broken, those two must have been shaken up
pretty badly.”

“I wish they had been shaken up more—especially that young fellow. It
would do him good,” grumbled Joe.

Rose looked up at him inquiringly.

“What’s the matter now, Strainer Man?” she asked flippantly. “What’s the
big grouch?”

“Did you see how that—what’s-his-name—Chester Drew looked at you?”
asked Joe accusingly. “I bet he thinks he met you somewhere before.”

“Maybe he did,” said Rose calmly. “Probably a lot of people will meet
me, one way or another, before I die, Joey. You’ve got to sort of get
used to it.”

“Well, he’d better not look at you that way, if he values his life,”
retorted Joe, glowering.

“A cat can look at a king!” giggled Rose, adding wickedly: “Besides he
had awfully nice blue eyes; didn’t you notice them?”

“I don’t like this party,” objected Joe plaintively, while the others
joined in Rose’s merriment. “I want to go home!”

“Too late now,” Helen told him, laughing. “Here’s Miss Jellicoe’s house,
and if I am not very much mistaken there is the little lady herself
standing in the doorway. You couldn’t escape from her now, if you wanted
to.”

“Um-yum!” said Joe longingly. “Do I smell flapjacks?”

They had come to a little white house set far back from the road and one
could guess that, in the summer time, roses rioted over it and made gay
the old-fashioned garden in front.

There was a picket fence about the place and a broad pathway led up to
the hospitably opened front door. This path had been scrupulously
cleared of snow and the cozy invitation of it was not to be ignored.

The young folks swarmed up it now, led by Helen. Miss Jellicoe, looking
more than ever like a little pink-checked old lady stepped out of a
story book, welcomed them prettily, drawing them into the spacious
comfort of the living room.

Books lined three sides of this apartment and on the fourth was a great
open fireplace. In this a fire crackled and roared, recklessly shooting
sparks up the broad chimney.

There was a laughing and informal introduction of the boys, whom Miss
Jellicoe immediately took under her wing. Then the girls, divested of
hats and wraps, turned their hands to the welcome warmth of the blaze.

“It is almost like—being home again,” said Helen, half to herself and
half aloud.

Hugh heard the murmured words and turned to her. What he saw in her eyes
caused him to drop his own to the leaping flame of the fire. That look
had not been meant for him or any one else to read.

Rose it was who dropped a hint of Joe’s yearning after flapjacks and
Rose, too, who, later, helped the kindly little hostess stir up the
delectable batter for the treat.

They made a great time of lunch, spreading the table in the living room
before the open fire, consuming flapjacks and maple syrup as though they
had eaten nothing for at least a week previous to this occasion.

A delightful meal with the fire crackling and snapping in sympathy with
their merriment, and the cheeks of Miss Jellicoe growing bright with
pleasure as compliments were showered upon her and her flapjacks.

A pleasant meal, indeed, and one whose memory lingered so persistently
after the eating of it that the young people grew lazy and lounged about
the fire chatting and laughing while Joe Morris recounted funny stories
that kept them in continual gales of merriment.

It remained for Margy to jog them out of their laziness by suggesting
that they carry out the plan they had made on the train and spend the
later hours of the afternoon nutting in the woods.

“Do come on,” she urged. “If we sit over this fire any longer, we’ll be
scorched a rich brown.”

“Yes!” cried Rose, springing out of her seat. “Let’s get to the woods
and gather those nuts we talked so much about.”

It took considerable persuasion to induce the other lazy ones to leave
the comfort of the fire for the nipping air of the out-of-doors.

However, they were finally won over and started out, armed with baskets
that were rather discouragingly large.

“It would take all the rest of to-day and part of to-morrow to fill
these baskets,” Joe protested. “Haven’t you got something smaller, Miss
Jellicoe?”

“Give him a strainer, Miss Jessica,” suggested Rose, her eyes dancing.
“He just dotes on ’em—the older they are and the more holes they have
in them, the better!”

Miss Jessica Jellicoe looked so surprised at this that an explanation
was necessary. In the midst of the recital of his rescue of the
dilapidated family strainer from the moving van, Joe strode indignantly
from the room and from the house.

At the noise of the door slamming behind him, Miss Jessica looked
slightly startled.

“He isn’t angry, is he?” she queried anxiously. “He won’t think we were
making fun of him?”

“He won’t think—he’ll know!” answered Rose, with a chuckle. The next
moment she threw her arms about the little old lady in a warm hug.

“Don’t worry about Joe, Miss Jessica, dear,” she adjured. “I’ve never
known him to get truly angry. He only thinks he does!”

They urged Miss Jellicoe to go with them on their nutting expedition,
but she refused with a gentle little chuckle.

“My nutting days are over,” she told them, waving good-bye to them from
the doorway. “I prefer my fire in weather like this.”

“I’ll say she’s sensible, at that,” said Lloyd, as he hefted his basket
experimentally. “Say, but it’s getting cold!”