“Here, if you don’t lift up your head and wake up, I’ll have to rub your face with snow; so sit up at once.  Oh! do, Elsie, dear.”

Elsie allowed herself to be lifted into another position, but she seemed dazed, and Dexie was thoroughly frightened and shook her by the arm, as she cried, “Oh, Elsie, can’t you hear me?  Don’t you know that if you fall asleep you will surely freeze to death?”

“Oh, Dexie, I’m freezing now,” was the low reply.

Dexie seized her hands and clapped them between her own stiff angers, which felt like lead, they seemed so heavy, but she succeeded in rousing Elsie so that she would talk to her.

“Let us try to sing,” said Dexie at last; “perhaps it will be easier than talking,” and she began “Jesus, lover of my soul.”

But before the verse was finished she became aware that she was scarcely murmuring the words herself, while Elsie had stopped altogether.

“I’m not going to sleep; so, there!” she said aloud.  “I will stay awake somehow, and make Elsie, too.”

She found that the effort she had made to speak aloud had aroused herself.  The drowsy feeling was dispelled, and she bent over Elsie and shook her until she received a faint answer.

“Do you think Lancy has arrived at the house, Elsie?” she asked a few minutes later.  No answer, for Elsie’s head had fallen back on the seat.  She was oblivious to all remarks.

“Dear me, this will never do!  However shall I keep her awake more than a minute at a time?  What if Lancy returns and finds her stiff and cold?”

The thought was awful, and for the next few minutes there were some lively movements under the sleigh robes; but the terror that filled Dexie’s heart gave way to a feeling of relief as Elsie sat up and reproached her friend for being “so rough.”

“But I shall have to use you roughly, Elsie, if you don’t stay awake,” Dexie answered, as she placed the robes around her; “so keep talking, then I’ll be sure of you.”

But the intense cold seemed to freeze the words on her lips, and soon an unintelligible murmur was the only answer to Dexie’s questions.

“What shall I do?  She will be asleep in another minute, if I don’t look out.  If I could only get her cross she would give me less trouble.”

As a general thing Elsie was very easy-going, though she had quite a temper when once it was aroused, but with the excellent training she received from her mother, she seldom lost control of herself.  When she did, she was cross clear through, and it took her a long time to get over it.  Dexie thought that this was a time when a burst of temper might be justifiable; so she determined to pick a quarrel with her, and hoped the end would justify the means.

Shaking her roughly to gain her attention, a few sarcastic remarks soon started a wordy warfare, and sharp words went back and forth for some time.  Presently their situation occurred to Elsie, and she burst into tears of repentance.