“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.

In the middle of the night, Charlotte, waking from an uneasy sleep, felt the house rocking so violently with the tempest that she became alarmed.  She wondered if the shaky frame could withstand the continued shocks.  The air of the room felt very cold to her cheek, although she had, out of consideration for the unusual conditions, refrained from opening wide her window.  The rush of cold seemed to be coming from the door which opened into her grandmother’s room, and with a sudden fear she flew out of bed and ran to investigate.  With the first step inside Madam Chase’s door her bare foot encountered the icy touch of snow, and she realized that a window was undoubtedly open to the full force of the storm.