Molly did not answer. She was afraid to trust her voice just then, and still more afraid of what she might say if she dared speak.
"What was all that rumpus over there?" demanded Judy when the young people had joined their friends.
"Oh, just a little volcanic activity on the part of Mount aetna and a good deal of slinging of hot lava. Miss Molly and I are refugees from the eruption, and Mount aetna has gone upstairs."
"You mean Miss aetna Blount?" asked Judy.
"The same," said Lawrence.
When it was time for the Wellington party to catch the trolley car home, they emerged from the warm, cheerful dining hall into a world of dazzling whiteness. The trees were clothed in it, and the ground was covered with a crust of ice as hard and shining as marble.
A path of ashes was sprinkled before them, so that they walked safely as far as the station.
"Heaven help us at the other end," Mrs. McLean exclaimed, clinging to the doctor"s arm.
The car was late in arriving at Exmoor station. At last it hove into sight, moving at a hesitating gait along the slippery rails. But it had a comfortably warm interior and they were glad to climb in out of the bitter cold.
"All aboard!" called the conductor. "Last car to-night."
There is always a gloomy fatality in the announcement, "Last car to-night." It is just as if a doctor might say: "Nothing more can be done."
Clang, clang, went the bell, and they moved slowly forward.
After an age of slipping and sliding, frequent stopping and starting and exchanges of loud confidences between the motorman and the conductor, the car came to a dead stop.
Dr. McLean, who had been sound asleep and snoring loudly, waked up.
"Bless my soul, are we there?" he demanded.
"No, sir, and far from it," answered the conductor, who had opened the door and come inside, beating his hands together for warmth.
"Far from it? What do you mean by that, my good man?" asked the doctor.
"There ain"t no more power, sir," answered the man. "The trolley"s just a solid cable of ice and budge she won"t. You couldn"t move her with a derrick."
"But what are we to do?" asked the doctor.
"I couldn"t say, sir, unless you walked. It"s only a matter of about two miles. Otherwise, you"d have to spend the night here and it"ll be a cold place. There ain"t no more heat, is there, Jim?"
"There ain"t," was Jim"s brief reply.
"I guess Jim and I"ll foot it into Wellington and the best you can do is to come along."
The doctor and his wife conferred with the young teacher who had chaperoned the other party. The question was, would it not be a greater risk to walk two miles in thin-soled shoes and party dresses over that wilderness of ice than to remain snugly in the car until they could get help? The motorman and conductor were well protected from the cold and from slipping, too, with heavy overcoats and arctic shoes. While they were talking, these two individuals took their departure, letting in a cold blast of air as they slid the door back to get out.
The Wellington crowd sat huddled together, hoping to keep warm by human contact. They tried to beguile the weary hours with conversation, but time dragged heavily and the car grew colder and colder. Some of the girls began to move up and down, practicing physical culture exercises and beating their hands together.
"I think it would be better to walk," announced Mrs. McLean at last. "We are in much greater danger of freezing to death sitting here than moving. We"ll stick to the track. It won"t be so slippery between the rails."
Even the doctor was relieved at this suggestion, fearful as he was of slipping on the ice. The gude wife was right, as she always was, and the la.s.sies had better take the risk and come along quickly. Before they realized it, they were on the track with faces turned hopefully toward Wellington. Scarcely had they taken six steps, before three of the girls tumbled flat, and while they were picking themselves up, Dr. and Mrs.
McLean sat down plump on the ice, hand in hand, like two astonished children. It was quite impossible to keep from laughing at this ludicrous situation, especially when the doctor"s great "haw-haw" made the air tremble. The ones who were standing helped the ones who had fallen to rise and fell themselves in the effort.
"If we only had on skates," cried Judy, "wouldn"t it be glorious? We could skate anywhere, right across the fields or along the road. It"s just like a sea of solid ice."
For an hour they took their precarious way along the track, which was now on the edge of a high embankment.
"A grand place for coasting," remarked Judy, peeping over the edge.
Suddenly her heels went over her head and her horrified friends beheld her sliding backwards down the hill.
"Are you hurt at all, my la.s.s?" called the doctor, peeping fearfully over the side, and holding onto his wife as a drowning man catches at a life preserver.
"Hurt? No," cried Judy, convulsed with laughter.
"Do you think you can crawl back?" asked Mrs. McLean doubtfully.
Then Judy began the most difficult ascent of her life, on hands and knees. There was nothing to take hold of and, when she had got half-way up, back she slipped to the bottom again.
A second time she had almost reached the top when she lost her footing and once more slipped to the base of the embankment.
"You"d better go on without me," she cried, half sobbing and half laughing.
The doctor was very uncomfortable. Not for worlds would he have put foot outside the trolley rails, but something had to be done.
"Let"s make a human ladder," suggested Molly, "as they do in melodramas.
I"ll go first. Nance, you take my foot and someone hold on to yours and so on. Then, Judy can climb up, catching hold of us."
The doctor considered this a good scheme and the human chain was accordingly formed, the doctor himself grasping the ankle of the last volunteer, who happened to be Judith Blount. But hardly had Judy commenced the upward climb, when the doctor"s heels went over his head and the entire human ladder found itself huddled together at the foot of the embankment.
"It"s a case of every mon for himself and the divvel tak" the hindmost,"
exclaimed the doctor, sitting up stiffly and rubbing his shins. "Help yoursel"s, la.s.sies. I can do nae mair."
Some of them reached the track at last and some of them didn"t, and those who couldn"t make it were Molly and Judith Blount.
"You"ll have to follow along as best you can down there," called Mrs.
McLean, grasping her husband"s arm. "We"ll keep an eye on you from above."
Once more the belated revellers started on their way, while Molly and Judith Blount pursued a difficult path between a frozen creek and the trolley embankment.
CHAPTER XI.
THE GREAT SLEET OF 19--.
Many a fall and many a bruise they got that night as they crept along the frozen path. At last they reached a point where the creek had been turned abruptly from its bed and pa.s.sed through a culvert under the embankment. Here the path also changed its course and headed for the golf links of the college.