Monday morning, Mr. Ashe left for the West; and the next day, the new term began.

“It’ll seem odd, not going to Miss Rankin’s room,” Blue Bonnet said, overtaking Debby on the way to school. “I wonder if she’ll miss us.”

“Some of us,” Debby suggested.

“Alec says, Miss Fellows is ever so jolly.”

“She hasn’t been at it so long,” Debby commented. “Are you taking French, Blue Bonnet?”

Blue Bonnet nodded. “It has to be that, or German, hasn’t it? Aunt Lucinda thought I’d better choose French this year. I’ve studied it some; one of the tutors instituted an hour’s conversation every day, just after dinner; there used to be—interruptions.”

Blue Bonnet came home that afternoon most enthusiastic; Miss Fellows was all she ought to be, she shouldn’t have a bit of trouble with her.

“And does the lady in question feel confident regarding you?” Mrs. Clyde asked.

Blue Bonnet laughed. “She hasn’t said—yet. It’s ever so big a class, Grandmother; there were a lot of left-overs. French is three times a week—Mondays,269 Wednesdays, and Fridays—Mademoiselle looks awfully nice! Sarah and Amanda are taking German—isn’t it just like Sarah to choose the hardest? All the rest of us club members are taking French—Kitty says she wants to learn how to take ‘French leave’ and, oh, me, I promised not to be five minutes—they’re all waiting down at the back gate for me.”

Blue Bonnet dropped her strap of books, ran for her skates, paid a visit to the cookie jar in the pantry, patted Solomon, and with a “Good-bye, Grandmother,” was off, leaving Mrs. Clyde feeling as if a small whirlwind had swept through the quiet house.

What with school, her afternoons on the pond, her evenings of study, broken by occasional neighborhood gatherings, Blue Bonnet found the time slipping by very fast. While she missed her uncle greatly, she was learning more and more how much can be done by letter-writing, and those were far from doleful letters that traveled every week from Woodford to the far-away Texas ranch.

The weather held wonderfully; never had the pond been in better condition than during those January days.

“But the thaw’s bound to come before long,” Debby predicted one afternoon.

“The snow’s coming first!” Susy pointed to the270 clouds banking themselves up above the low line of hills—“Coming before to-morrow morning, too.”

“Let’s not go in just yet!” Blue Bonnet pleaded, as Susy bent to unfasten her straps.

“But it’s time!”

“You’re such a prompt-to-the-minute girl, Susy Doyle!” Blue Bonnet objected. “I’m not ready to go—are you, Kitty?”

“You never are ready,” Debby protested. They four were the only club members out that afternoon; as Debby insisted later, if only Sarah had been there it would never have happened.

“I’d like to start right off now and skate and skate without stopping, until I got to the end of the pond!” Blue Bonnet declared.

“But no one ever does skate up at the upper end of the pond,” Susy explained; “the ice is always rough up there; besides, it isn’t safe in ever so many spots.”

“Anyhow, I’d like to try it.” Blue Bonnet was in the mood for adventure; wasn’t it Friday afternoon? “I mean to ask Alec to go with me.”

“He’s playing hockey!” Kitty said, looking at a group of boys down beyond. “He wouldn’t take you if he wasn’t—nor let you go,” she added mischievously.

“I don’t see how he could very well help that,” Blue Bonnet retorted. “I believe I’ll try it alone.”

271 “Blue Bonnet!” Susy gasped.

“I’d like awfully well to see you!” Kitty teased, in what Amanda called her “aggravating tone.”

“Is that a dare?” Blue Bonnet demanded.

“If you like to call it one.”

Blue Bonnet bent to tighten her skates.

“Blue Bonnet Ashe!” Debby exclaimed. “Are you clean daft! Start up there at this time of the evening—when you ought to be going home?”

“You don’t know how far it is,” Susy urged.

“No—but I’m going to find out,” Blue Bonnet said.

“Don’t worry, Susy,” Kitty remarked; “she won’t go very far.”

Blue Bonnet’s eyes flashed. “I’ll go as far as you will, Kitty Clark!”

“‘Is that a dare?’” Kitty quoted; she, too, bent to tighten her skates. “Come on!” she said; and before Debby or Susy realized it the two were off.

“Of all the—” Debby took a few steps, then came back to where Susy still stood, her skates in her hand. “Kitty, or Blue Bonnet, alone, one might manage to do something with—but together! Come on, Susy—it’s no use our standing here in the cold; perhaps they’ll turn around presently. Kitty knows she’s no right letting Blue Bonnet go up there after dark.”

“Shall we go tell some of the boys?” Susy asked.

272 But the boys were far down at the other end by now, fighting an exciting game to a finish. The pond had been thinning rapidly the last half hour, for, with the coming of night, a cold wind had sprung up.

Debby shivered. “It wouldn’t be much use; by the time we got them those two foolish girls would be out of call. It’s all that Kitty’s fault! She just dared Blue Bonnet on.”

At first, Blue Bonnet thoroughly enjoyed that swift rush along through the gathering dusk; they had the wind at their back, and ahead of them the pond to themselves. Then the two hours or more already spent in skating that afternoon began to tell on her, and with the sense of fast-growing fatigue came equally rapid misgivings. She glanced sideways at her companion; why wouldn’t Kitty speak! If only she would admit the foolishness of the undertaking, Blue Bonnet would give in too, but until Kitty gave in—she would not.

Kitty was thinking the same; she knew, as Blue Bonnet did not, not only the foolishness, but the risk of what they had undertaken. What had possessed her to start such a ball rolling? Once started, it went without saying that she could not be the first to throw up the game. Blue Bonnet was getting tired already, one could see that, though she was trying not to show it; and then—

But Kitty reckoned without knowledge.

273 The pond was growing narrower now, with sharp twists and turns that made Blue Bonnet think of the brook she and Alec had followed that August afternoon. The thought of the brook reminded her of Aunt Lucinda.

For just a moment, Blue Bonnet wavered; Aunt Lucinda had gone into town and would not be back until the nine o’clock train—Grandmother was alone, and would be worried.

Kitty saw the sudden slackening on Blue Bonnet’s part, and took comfort from it. “Ready to go back?” she asked, more than a hint of “I told you how it would be” in her voice.

Blue Bonnet wavered no longer; it was impossible to give in to Kitty—of all people; Kitty had started it, and it was her place to make the first move towards turning back.

“I am ready whenever you are,” she answered; “you have only to say the word.”

“I thought you wanted to go to the very end?”

Blue Bonnet made no answer. Kitty was the—Sarah would never be so horrid; and then the mere thought of Sarah in connection with such a foolish performance as this, made Blue Bonnet laugh.

So the two pushed doggedly on through the fast-deepening dusk, stumbling more than once against snags; tired, cold, hungry, and miserable, and with the discouraging knowledge that every moment was taking them further from home.

274 It seemed to Blue Bonnet as if the pond had no end, but was like some dreary, enchanted lake in the fairy stories; that she and Kitty, like the brook, must go on and on forever. It did not seem possible that it could be the same pond she and the others had skated on so gaily that afternoon—if it really was that afternoon.

It was quite dark by now. Far away, across the fields, a solitary light showed in some lonely farmhouse window, and now and then they caught the sound of a dog barking.

It wouldn’t have been so unbearable, Blue Bonnet thought, if only Kitty would speak.

And then Kitty did speak—“We shall have to keep close to the bank from now on—the ice isn’t safe further out—that is, unless you want to go back?” No one should say that she had not given Blue Bonnet every opportunity to behave like a reasonable being.

“Do you?” Blue Bonnet asked.

In her heart, Kitty knew herself more than ready, but the little demon that had seemed hovering near her all the afternoon, prompted her to say, “We haven’t got to the end yet. I thought—”

On they went again, both too tired to skate at all fast. Kitty told herself that she would never dare anyone like Blue Bonnet Ashe again; it had proved a veritable boomerang of a dare. Blue Bonnet felt that once she had got her skates off, she275 should never want to see them again. While the realization that ahead of them both waited a probable very bad quarter of an hour, did not serve to make things any brighter.

And then a little group of bare trees loomed tall and shadowy almost in front of them, and, a moment later, the end of the pond was reached.

“I know now,” Blue Bonnet dropped wearily down on the snowy bank, “how Miss Rankin’s beloved Pilgrim Fathers felt when they landed on Plymouth Rock!”

“You mustn’t do that!” Kitty commanded. “Get up this moment.”

“I simply can’t—just yet. Only I don’t suppose our motive and theirs for setting out were precisely similar, do you, Kitty?”

“I’m not supposing anything about it! Will you get up? Or do you want to catch the worst cold you’ve ever had—and have everyone saying it was my fault?”

“I don’t see how they could say that,” Blue Bonnet got up reluctantly. “I suppose our next move—is to go back.”

“We can’t go back on the ice—it’s too dark and the wind would be dead against us all the way.”

Blue Bonnet began working at her skates. “I’m mighty glad of that!”

“Going ’cross lots through the snow won’t be exactly what you might call fun,” Kitty remarked.276 “Come on—I don’t know what time we’ll get home, as it is.”

“Let’s not have ‘Quaker meeting’ going home, Kitty,” Blue Bonnet begged.

“It won’t be ‘Quaker meeting’—once we do get home, I’m thinking,” Kitty answered; “and I just know mamma will be worried to death.”

“Kitty, why did we do it?” Blue Bonnet asked.

“Maybe we’d better not go into that at present,” Kitty suggested. “There—it’s beginning to snow!”

It certainly was, in a thorough-going, determined fashion that promised to last through the night, at the least.

Walking ’cross lots after dark through ankle-deep snow, with the storm beating in one’s face, was not a particularly pleasant way of passing the time, Blue Bonnet decided. “Kitty Clark!” she burst out. “If ever you dare dare me again!”

Kitty laughed. “You didn’t have to take it!”

“You knew I would!”

Kitty pulled off her mittens, blowing on her numbed fingers. “Well, I got paid in kind, didn’t I? Blue Bonnet, you mustn’t!” For Blue Bonnet had slipped her muff off, throwing the chain over Kitty’s head.

“Turn and turn about!” she insisted.

“Are you—too utterly fagged out?” Kitty277 asked presently, real concern in her voice, as Blue Bonnet stumbled, just saving herself from falling.

“I’m—a bit tired,” Blue Bonnet confessed. “I suppose it’s because I’m not so used to this sort of thing!” She wondered if Kitty really did know her way through the dark and storm; to all outward seeming, they were struggling aimlessly on across fields that had apparently no boundaries. They had left the friendly little light behind long since; it seemed as if she and Kitty were quite alone in a world of wind and snow.

All at once, she came to an abrupt stop. “Kitty, I’ve got to rest!” She dropped down on the snow in a forlorn little heap.

Kitty longed to follow suit; instead, she gave Blue Bonnet a little shake. “Blue Bonnet, get up immediately! We’re nearly to the road now; it won’t be half as hard walking then.”

“I don’t think I care very much whether we are near the road or not,” Blue Bonnet said wearily; “all I want is to sit still for a while.”

“Blue Bonnet, please! Haven’t you and I both had enough of doing what we want for one day?”

“I’ve had more than enough,” Blue Bonnet conceded readily, but she did not get up.

Kitty gave her a second shake, and a harder one. “Blue Bonnet! I got you into this, and............