Suddenly Sally looked down toward the house.  She shielded her eyes with one hand.

“There’s Mary Ann Flinders, watching at the kitchen window,” she exclaimed.  “Poor child, how she must envy us!” She stopped short and looked at the toboggan’s owner.  “Why can’t we ask her up for a little while, Mr. Ferry?” she suggested.  “You wouldn’t mind, would you?”

“Not in the least.  Shall I go for her?”

“I’ll go.  Please don’t come.”  And Sally was off like the wind, down over the path which much tramping had made through the snow.  Jarvis and Ferry looked at one another and smiled.

“Do you know another girl in the world who would have thought of doing that?” asked Jarvis, with amusement.

“Not many, out of those who happened to have devoted cavaliers beside them, certainly,” admitted the other young man, looking after the rapid transit of the crimson cap across the snowy fields.  “But Miss Sally is a law unto herself—­and the unexpected is the thing one may expect from her every time.  Yet she’s not capricious purely for the sake of being capricious, like so many girls.  She can be counted on—­at the same time that one doesn’t know exactly where to find her.”  He laughed.  “There’s a paradox for you.”

“Counted on to do the thing you’re glad afterward she has done,” supplemented Sally’s old friend.

If Sally could have heard them, her small ears—­burning with the transition from cold air to warm, as in the kitchen she hurriedly forced Mary Ann, protesting with feeble giggles, into whatsoever garments could be adapted to the purpose—­would have burned even more fiercely.  But it is quite safe to say that she had no thought whatever of the effect her impulsive little act might have upon anybody—­except Mary Ann herself.

CHAPTER XII

IN THE OLD GARDEN

“Mother, won’t you drive out to the farm with us?  Jo will tell you I drive like a veteran, and the roads aren’t bad—­with chains on the rear tires.”

Jarvis’s hand was on the door as he spoke.  He wore a motorist’s cap, coat, and leather gauntlets.

Mrs. Burnside shook her head, smiling.  “I’ll make my first trip into the country when the chains are not needed, son.  Give Sally my love, and tell her that now spring is at hand I shall come out with you often.”

“Let me tell her you’ll come out and spend the whole season there.  Furnish the west side of the house, take Joanna, share expenses—­and chaperon her.”

“Whom—­Joanna?” Josephine Burnside, sheathing herself in veils for the drive in the chilly early April air, glanced at her brother with a mischievous air.  “She’s forty, if she’s a day.  Surely she doesn’t need—­”

“I wish you people would take me seriously.  Could you find a pleasanter place to spend the summer?  I expect to spend every daylight hour of every day there, from the fifteenth of April on.”