otten upon their feet (or their neighbors'), packed
like sardines into the two other sleighs, and, with six instead of four
horses now drawing each, started homeward, none the worse for their spill,
excepting a good shaking up, a few handfuls of snow merrily forming rills
and rivulets down their necks, some badly battered hats and torn coats,
and one of them, at least, with some wholesome lessons regarding handling
four frisky horses when the air is frosty and a number of lives may depend
upon keeping "top side go, la!"

CHAPTER XVI

LETTERS

When the sleighing party reached home they found hot chocolate and ginger
cookies awaiting them. Before retiring, Miss Preston had seen to it that
neither shivering nor hungry bodies should be tucked into bed that night.

Five weeks had now sped away, and Toinette was beginning to look upon her
new abiding-place as home; at least, it was nearer to it than any she
could remember. The old life at the Carter school seemed a sort of
nightmare from which she had wakened to find broad daylight and all the
miserable fancies dispelled.

She and Cicely were seated at their desks one afternoon. It was half-past
four and study hour. Cicely was hard at work upon her algebra lesson, but
Toinette was writing a letter. This, she knew quite well, was not what she
was supposed to be doing, but the five weeks had not sufficed to undo the
mischief done in seven years, and she was writing simply from a spirit of
perversity. There was ample time to do it during her hours of freedom, but
the very fact of doing it when she knew full well that she ought to be at
work on her German added piquancy to the act. Moreover, the letter was to
a boy with whom she had become acquainted while at Miss Carter's, and had
kept the acquaintance a most profound secret. Not that she cared specially
for the boy, although he was a jolly sort of chap, and had been a pleasant
companion during their stolen interviews, and often smuggled boxes of
candy and other "forbidden fruit" into the girl's possession.

Still, at Miss Carter's a boy sprouting angel's wings would have been
regarded in very much the same light as though he were sprouting imp's
horns, and any girl caught talking to one--much less corresponding--would
have had a very bad quarter of an hour, indeed. So, though she did not
care two straws whether she ever saw him again or not, all the
wrong-headedness which had been so carefully fostered for the past