As Leila got into the sleigh, she said, “Now, Billy, go slowly when you make the short turn at the house.  If you upset us, I—­I’ll kill you.”

“Yes, miss.  Guess I’ll drive all right.”  But the ways of drivers are everywhere the same, and to come to the end of a drive swiftly with crack of whip was an unresisted temptation.

“Sang de Dieu!” cried John, “we will be upset.”

“We are,” shouted Leila.  The horse was down, the sleigh on its side, and the cousins disappeared in a huge drift piled high when the road was cleared.

CHAPTER II

John was the first to return to the outer world.  He stood still, seeing the horse on its legs, Billy unharnessing, Leila for an instant lost to sight.  The boy was scared.  In his ordered life it was an unequalled experience.  Then he saw a merry face above the drift and lying around it a wide-spread glory of red hair on the white snow.  In after years he would recall the beauty of the laughing young face in its setting of dark gold and sunlit silver snow.

“Oh, my!” she cried.  “That Billy!  Don’t stand there, John; pull me out, I’m stuck.”

He gave her a hand and she bounded forth out of the drift, shaking off the dry snow as a wet dog shakes off water.  “What’s the matter, John?”

He was trying to empty neck, pocket and shoes of snow, and was past the limits of what small endurance he had been taught.  “I shall catch my death of cold.  It’s down my back—­it’s everywhere, and I—­shall get—­laryngitis.”

The brave blue eyes of the girl stared at his dejected figure.  She was at heart a gentle, little woman-child, endowed by nature with so much of tom-boy barbarism as was good for her.  Just now a feeling of contemptuous surprise overcame her kindliness and her aunt’s training.  “There’s your bag on the snow, and Billy will find your cap.  What does a boy want with a bag?  A boy—­and afraid of snow!” she cried.  “Help him with that harness.”

He made no reply, but looked about for his lost cane.  Then the young despot turned upon the driver.  “Wait till Uncle James hears; he’ll come down on you.”

“My lands!” said Billy, unbuckling a trace, “I’ll just say, I’m sorry; and the Squire he’ll say, don’t let it happen again; and I’ll say, yes, sir.”

“Yes, until Aunt Ann hears,” said Leila, and turned to John.  His attitude of utter helplessness touched her.

“Come into the house; you must be cold.”  She was of a sudden all tenderness.

Through an outside winter doorway-shelter they entered a hall unusually large for an American’s house and warmed by two great blazing hickory wood-fires.  “Come in,” she cried, “you’ll be all right.  Sit down by the fire; I’ll be down in a minute, I want to see where Aunt Ann has put you.”