CHAPTER XV

GREAT PREPARATIONS

“Meg!” he called.  “What do you think?  Here’s the old skating cap!”

“Skating cap?” repeated Meg stupidly.

“Yes!  The skating cap we noticed when we were going to Mrs. Anson’s,” said Bobby.  “Don’t you remember?  We must be clear on the other side of the pond.  That was the back road we followed.”

Meg was too tired, with tramping through the deep snow, to care very much about which road they had followed.  She wanted to get home.

“My coat collar’s all wet on my neck,” she complained fretfully.  “How can we get over the pond, Bobby?”

“Have to walk it,” said Bobby.  “The snow’s too thick to try to skate.  Give me your hand, and you won’t slip.”

Meg didn’t slip, but half way across Bobby did, his feet going out from under him without warning and sending him sprawling.  It was so dark now, for they had walked a long distance since leaving Mrs. Anson’s house, that Meg could hardly see him.

“Bobby! where are you?” she cried.

“Right here, don’t step on me,” giggled Bobby, scrambling to his feet and making sure the eggs were unharmed.  “That dark thing over there must be the bank.  Gee, doesn’t that sound like Philip?”

A dog on the low bank had barked, and indeed it did sound like Philip.

“Why it is!” called Meg in delight, when they reached the edge of the pond and began to climb up.  “You dear, old Philip!  Were you looking for us?”

Philip wagged his stumpy tail and frisked about, trying his best to tell the children that he had come out to look for them.  Having Philip with them to talk to and pet made the rest of the way home seem shorter, and in less than fifteen minutes Meg and Bobby were shaking the snow off their clothes in the Blossom front hall.

“Your mother has worried ever since the first snow flake,” said Father Blossom, helping Meg shake snow from her wet hair.  “Sam and I should have been out with a lantern if you had been much longer.”

“We’re starving,” declared Bobby, handing over the eggs which he had remembered to carry carefully all the time.  “Isn’t supper ready?”

Supper was ready and Meg and Bobby were so hungry that Father Blossom pretended to be alarmed for fear there wasn’t enough food in the house.  He said he was afraid Norah would come in and say there was no more bread and that all the butter and baked potatoes were gone, and then what would they do?

“Oh, I think they’re only a little hungrier than usual,” Aunt Polly said, smiling.

Being lost in a snow storm didn’t make either Bobby or Meg dislike the snow and the first thing they thought of the next morning was the weather.

“I hope it snowed all night,” said Meg cheerfully.  “I would like to see snow up to the second-story windows, wouldn’t you, Bobby?”