And what could she do without rubber boots, when she wanted to wade through a brook, like this one, and the brooks were as they were now, all running spang full to the very edge with snow-water, the way this one did?  Oo . . .  Ooh . . .  Ooh! how queer it did feel, to be standing most up to your knees this way, with the current curling by, all cold and snaky, feeling the fast-going water making your boot-legs shake like Aunt Hetty’s old cheeks when she laughed, and yet your feet as dry inside!  How could they feel as cold as that, without being wet, as though they were magicked?  That was a real difference, even more than the wind cool inside your hair and the sun warm on the outside; or your hair tied tight at one end and all wobbly loose at the other.  But this wasn’t a nice difference.  It didn’t add up to make a nice feeling, but a sort of queer one, and if she stood there another minute, staring down into that swirly, snatchy water, she’d fall right over into it . . . it seemed to be snatching at her! Oh gracious!  This wasn’t much better! on the squelchy dead grass of the meadow that looked like real ground and yet you sank right into it.  Oh, it was horridly soft, like touching the hand of that new man that had come to live with the old gentleman next door.  She must hurry as fast as she could . . . it felt as though it was sucking at her feet, trying to pull her down altogether like the girl with the red shoes, and she didn’t have any loaves of bread to throw down to step on . . .

Well, there! this was better, as the ground started uphill.  There was firm ground under her feet.  Yes, not mud, nor soaked, flabby meadow-land, but solid earth, solid, solid! She stamped on it with delight.  It was just as nice to have solid things very solid, as it was to have floaty things like clouds very floaty.  What was horrid was to have a thing that looked solid, and yet was all soft, like gelatine pudding when you touched it.

Well, for goodness’ sake, where was she?  Where had she come to, without thinking a single thing about it?  Right on the ridge overlooking Aunt Hetty’s house to be sure, on those rocks that hang over it, so you could almost throw a stone down any one of the chimneys.  She might just as well go down and make Aunt Hetty a visit now she was so near, and walk home by the side-road.  Of course Paul would say, nothing could keep him from saying, that she had planned to do that very thing, right along, and when she left the school-house headed straight for Aunt Hetty’s cookie-jar.  Well, let him!  She could just tell him, she’d never dreamed of such a thing, till she found herself on those rocks.