St. Nicholas/Volume 32/Number 3/Prudence
The Lateness of Prudence.
By Carroll Watson Rankin.
Prudence, in spite of her thoughtful name, her dimples, and her cheerful disposition, was a most exasperating young person to live with, for she never knew the time of day. She was generally late to meals, tardy at school, behind time at the dentist’s, and, as her brother Bob put it, could not be depended on to catch even a freight train.
The different members of the family, knowing Prudence’s failing, had presented her from time to time with clocks of various shapes and sizes, but seemingly to no purpose. Timeless Prudence wound them faithfully at night, but forgot to look at them in the morning. The little enameled watch that gave her so much pleasure on her sixteenth birthday helped matters until the novelty, but not the enamel, had worn off; but matters did not stay helped. Prudence was soon winding her watch precisely as she wound her collection of clocks, merely from force of habit. She put this little timepiece on in the morning and took it off at night just as she did her frock, and it troubled her as little throughout the day. Moreover, none of her timepieces was ever right—association with Prudence was enough, seemingly, to demoralize any clock or watch.
When her troubled family remonstrated, as I am sorry to say was frequently the case, Prudence, with all her dimples showing, would say:
“You would n’t wish me to be like Cousin Octavia, would you?”
The family, reminded of Cousin Octavia, who was not only distressingly prompt herself, but insisted upon making every one else conform to her hours, always shuddered and involuntarily exclaimed, “Oh, no.”
There finally came a moment, however, when even Prudence realized that time and punctuality are to be prized, She was entertaining a California cousin, a girl of about her own age, who went into raptures over the snow—the first she had ever seen. Prudence lived in northern Michigan, where snow is anything but a novelty. When Grace arrived, just before the holidays, the ground was well covered, but not with the kind of snow one ordinarily raves about. One morning early in January, however, the enthusiastic Californian poked her feet into her warm, pink bedroom slippers, went to the window, pulled the curtain aside, and looked out.
“Oh, I ’m so glad,” she cried. “It’s snowing, Prudence! Just look. Great big flakes coming down as fast as ever they can!”
“Oh, come back to bed,” grumbled Prudence. “I guess if you had to see the horrid flakes coming down from October to April you would n’t think it so fine. Bob will tell you what he thinks of it, too, when he has to shovel a few tons of it off the front walk.”
“I wish I could go snow-shoeing once,” said Grace, obediently dropping the curtain. “I ’ve always wanted to learn,”
“You shall have an opportunity,” said Prudence, sitting up in bed. “We have two clubs here. The girls walk Wednesday afternoons and the boys Wednesday evenings. Once a month we all walk together and have a jolly good supper at the men’s snow-shoe—club-house. We ‘ve just been waiting for snow enough—we have n’t had as much as usual this winter.”
“ But,” said Grace, “what good would that do me? I don’t know how to snow-shoe—I should have to learn.”
“Oh, no, you would n’t. All you do after you get the shoes on is to walk like this.”
Prudence slipped out of bed and walked around the room, taking long, deliberate steps.
“Bob gallantly strapped the long, slender shoes to the girls’ moccasined feet.”
“People take naturally to snow-shoeing, just as ducks take to swimming,” explained Prudence, “You have only to remember not to step on your own shoes nor on any one’s else, that ’s all—but you would soon find that out.”
Grace, catching sight of a pair of tennis-rackets on her cousin’s wall, got up on a chair, pulled them down, and after much labor tied one to each foot with her hair ribbons.
“There!” she cried, as she paddled with considerable difficulty around the room; “is that the idea? Tt is n’t so very difficult, I do believe. “You ’ll do,” said Prudence, smiling. “I can easily borrow extra shoes and moccasins for you. This snow will make things just right for next Wednesday.”
When Wednesday dawned, there was a light crust on the snow; the sky was dull, but the air was warm, with the wind from the south.
“It looks almost like rain,” said Bob. “It is n’t cold enough for snow. Don’t wear too many wraps, girls.”
“That’s good advice,” said Prudence. “No matter how cold it is when we start, I always wish I could hang my jacket up on a bush and leave it there forever. If it was n’t for coming home in a trolley-car afterward I should n’t wear one,”
“Still,” said Grace, looking admiringly at her cousin’s becoming red-and-white blanket suit,” it would be a pity not to wear a jacket as pretty as that. I’m so glad you borrowed this one for me.”
Bob, too, was in red and white, with scarlet toque and sash.
“Come, Prudence, hurry up,” said he, tucking the girls’ snow-shoes and his own under his arm. “We ‘re four minutes late already.”
“Oh, four minutes don’t matter,” said Prudence, easily; “what are four minutes!”
“Remember Waterloo,” replied Bob. “If Grouchy—”
“Pooh! Bob, I ’m tired of Grouchy and Waterloo too,” said Prudence. “Dear me! De wait until I get a handkerchief—I ’m not half ready. Oh, yes, I nearly forgot my gloves.”
In the school-yard where the two clubs met, Bob gallantly strapped the long, slender shoes, of Canadian make, to the girls’ moccasined feet. The gay precession, all in red and white, with tassels bobbing on scarlet caps, and long, bright sash ends fluttering, made an interesting, and, to Grace, a novel sight. She was so pleased with it all that she forgot that she was a novice, and walked off as naturally as if she had worn snow-shoes all her life. The captains of the two clubs walked together, leading their torch-bearing followers across the plains, where acres of unbroken snow seemed to stretch endlessly before them.
For an hour and twenty minutes the sturdy snow-shoers tramped steadily ahead over level plains that presently gave place to a vast black forest, where the flickering torches threw weird shadows among the straight dark pines.
Suddenly the leaders began to shout: “Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!”
Every voice chimed in; Grace shouted with the others and then asked what it meant.
“It’s the club yell,” explained Bob. “We ’re near the club-house, and this will let the folks that are getting supper know that we ‘re coming—and coming hungry.”
An answering “Hi! Hi!” came from the open door of a long, low-roofed log cabin, surrounded by tall pine-trees. In the huge fireplace a number of four-foot logs blazed merrily, and a coffee-boiler hanging from an iron crane sent forth a most inviting aroma. A long table laden with all sorts of good things awaited the hungry trampers.
The supper despatched, the tables were cleared, every one lending a hand. One of the chaperones took possession of the piano and started a lively college song.
The evening was a merry one. No one gave a thought to the weather or to going home. The cabin was on the electric-car line, and on snow-shoe nights cars ran, by special arrangement, every half-hour. Usually, however, the entire party liked to crowd into the very last car, which started for town just before midnight.
At half-past ten a spirited game of fox and geese was in progress. Deliberate Prudence had just been captured by the fox, when the outer door was pushed open and a figure, covered from head to heels with snow, entered the room.
“Say,” gasped the man, obviously panting for breath, “if you folks want to get to town to-night, you ‘ll have ta go right now. It was all we could do to get the car through the drifts, and it ‘ll be worse going back. The way ’s opened up now, but it won’t stay open for very long in this gale.”
“Hurry up, girls!” shouted one of the captains, who had taken a hasty glance out of doors. “There ’s a blizzard, sure enough. Get your wraps on as fast as you can.”
The motorman walked to the fireplace, pulled off his heavy gloves and warmed his fingers. “It ’s colder than the very blazes,” he said, “The wind switched to the north an hour ago. It ‘ll be twenty below zero by morning, and the snow ’s coming down—say, hurry those folks up a little.”
Sounds of laughter came from the girls’ dressing-room. Prudence, comfortably sitting in a rocking-chair, was telling a funny story. At Bob’s call all the girls but Prudence hurried into the outer room.
“Wait for me,” called Prudence; “I ’ve only one moccasin on.”
In the excitement, nobody heard her. Every one flocked out to the car, leaving Prudence struggling with her second moccasin. Two minutes later she was making her way through the snow toward the track, which she reached just as the brightly lighted car had reached its best speed and was moving swiftly away in the darkness.
“Oh!” gasped dismayed Prudence. “Surely somebody will miss me.”
Nobody did, however, except Bob, who, discovering promptly that Prudence was in neither the car nor the trailer, impulsively took a flying leap from the rear platform, without previously mentioning his purpose. Both cars were full, and Grace supposed, naturally, that her cousins were safe in the trailer. Reaching the clubhouse, Bob found a decidedly crestfallen Prudence, crouching with outstretched hands over the dying fire.
‘Well! This is a nice how-do-you-do!” exclaimed Bob.
“Did the car come back?” asked Prudence, looking up eagerly.
“No, it did n’t,” growled Bob, who was rubbing his pale yellow nose with a snowball. “I suppose it would have if I ’d waited to ask, but like an idiot, I just jumped off, That fire is n’t going to last ten minutes longer, and there is n’t another stick left in the shed. It ‘ll be colder than a barn here in another hour. Put on your snow-shoes; we ’ll have to walk to town—mother ‘ll be worried to death when Grace gets home without us. What color is my nose now?”
“Bright crimson.”
“Then it ’s all right,” said Bob, in a relieved tone. “Now come on, we must hurry; we must!”
Prudence gave a little gasp when she turned from the shelter of the trees to the open track. The wind, straight from the north, came in icy blasts. In many places the trolley wire overhead was all that indicated the car line. Prudence soon found that snow-shoeing in mild weather and plowing along through freshly fallen drifts were two very different matters. The wind striking the girl’s left cheek—hand in hand, they were traveling toward the east—was like a knife,
“Oh, Bob,” she wailed. “My face—”
“Rub it with snow,” shouted Bob, to make himself heard above the blizzard. “Come on—don’t stand still. It won’t be so bad after we ’ve turned the corner.”
It was bad enough, however, while it lasted. The distance to the comer was equal to about three city blocks, but it seemed to Prudence, gasping for breath in the dry, cold air, and laboriously dragging one heavy, snow-burdened foot to its place before the other, more like three miles. Half blinded by the stinging snow, the weary but plucky girl constantly stumbled, in spite of her firm clutch on Bob’s hand, into the deepest depressions and over the highest drifts.
“My stockings are frozen stiff, like icicles,” wailed Prudence. “I forgot to put on my leggings. My skirts are frozen all around the bottom, too.”
“Never mind your stockings I’m sheltering you all I can, but it ’s worse than I expected. Brace up, Prue; we ‘ll make it.”
The turning-point was reached at last. From this spot the car line ran due south, in the cenier of a broad highway lighted at long intervals by electric lights. It was within the city limits, but as yet there were no houses. With light ahead of them and the wind at their backs, it was, as Bob had promised, much easier walking. Even with this improvement, however, there was a long two miles ahead of them. The wind was still blowing a gale, the snow was piling itself in ten-foot drifts, and the mercury was an incredible number of degrees below zero. Prudence, with tears frozen on her cheeks, was certain she could not walk another block. But she did. Bob, without complaining of his own discomfort, scolded her, pulled her out of drifts, pushed her ahead when she lagged, and finally got her to a half-buried greenhouse on the out-skirts of the town, where the proprietor was up, attending to his fires. From this place Bob was able to telephone his anxious mother; and the greenhouse man found a bed for him over his shop, while Prue was kindly taken care of in the house by the old man’s wife.
“‘Oh Bob!’ she wailed, ‘My face—’”
Bob’s badly frosted left ear and cheek finally recovered, and Prudence suffered no lasting harm from her strenuous walk; but when she learned by the paper the next evening that the elderly janitor who had charge of the club-house, and who had locked it after them for the night, had been found frozen nearly to death in the snow only a few feet from his own home, she shuddered and thought again of Grouchy. Although she never became as punctual as Cousin Octavia, it was noticed after that that the girl’s clocks were always right, that she actually consulted them, and that, whoever else might be late, it was never Prudence.