We did not exchange a word, and after knocking
about in the library for several hours I went out for a
tramp. Winter had indeed come and possessed the
earth, and it had given me a new landscape. The snow
continued to fall in great, heavy flakes, and the ground
was whitening fast.
A rabbit's track caught my eye and I followed it,
hardly conscious that I did so. Then the clear print of
two small shoes mingled with the rabbit's trail. A few
moments later I picked up an overshoe, evidently lost
in the chase by one of Sister Theresa's girls, I reflected.
I remembered that while at Tech I had collected diverse
memorabilia from school-girl acquaintances, and here I
was beginning a new series with a string of beads and an
overshoe!
A rabbit is always an attractive quarry. Few things
besides riches are so elusive, and the little fellows have,
I am sure, a shrewd humor peculiar to themselves. I
rather envied the school-girl who had ventured forth for
a run in the first snow-storm of the season. I recalled
Aldrich's turn on Gautier's lines as I followed the
double trail: "Howe'er you tread, a tiny mould
Betrays that light foot all the same;
Upon this glistening, snowy fold
At every step it signs your name."
A pretty autograph, indeed! The snow fell steadily
and I tramped on over the joint signature of the girl
and the rabbit. Near the lake they parted company, the
rabbit leading off at a tangent, on a line parallel with
the lake, while his pursuer's steps pointed toward the
boat-house.
There was, so far as I knew, only one student of adventurous
blood at St. Agatha's, and I was not in the
least surprised to see, on the little sheltered balcony of
the boat-house, the red tam-o'-shanter. She wore, too,
the covert coat I remembered from the day I saw her
first from the wall. Her back was toward me as I drew
near; her hands were thrust into her pockets. She was
evidently enjoying the soft mingling of the snow with
the still, blue waters of the lake, and a girl and a snow-storm
are, if you ask my opinion, a pretty combination.
The fact of a girl's facing a winter storm argues
mightily in her favor,-testifies, if you will allow me,
to a serene and dauntless spirit, for one thing, and a
sound constitution, for another.
I ran up the steps, my cap in one hand, her overshoe
in the other. She drew back a trifle, just enough to
bring my conscience to its knees.
"I didn't mean to listen that day. I just happened
to be on the wall and it was a thoroughly underbred
trick-my twitting you about it-and I should have told
you before if I'd known how to see you-"
"May I trouble you for that shoe?" she said with a
great deal of dignity.