Getting home, however, proved a different matter from getting away from home. After escaping Mrs. Malony's insistent hospitality, the girls waded across the snowy street and out toward the point to see if Rosa Marie's home were still there. The door hung from one hinge and snow had drifted, and was still drifting, in at the doorway. "Do you think," asked Henrietta, gazing at the deserted house, "that Rosa Marie's mother will ever come back?" "No," returned Jean. "Not to any such homely baby as that," declared Marjory. "She _will_ come back," asserted Mabel, loyally. "She loved Rosa Marie--I saw it in her eyes." "Looks don't matter, with mothers," soothed Bettie. "A cat likes a homely yellow kitten as well as a lovely white one. And Dick has more freckles than Bob, but Mother likes him just as well." "Rosa Marie's mother stood right in that doorway," said Mabel, "and, as long as I could see her, her eyes were stretching out after Rosa Marie." "They must have stuck out on pegs like a lobster's," giggled Henrietta, "by the time you reached the corner." "I think you're _mean_," muttered Mabel. "I repent," apologized Henrietta. "For a moment I relapsed into Frederika, the Disguised Duchess; but now I'm your own kind-hearted Sallie and I wish that my toes were as warm as my affections. Let's start for civilization--we seem to have the world to ourselves. Doesn't anybody else like snow, I wonder?" CHAPTER XXIII Taking a Walk "PHEW!" gasped Jean, wheeling as the north wind, sweeping round the corner, caught her square in the face. "I don't think much of that! It's like ice." "Ugh!" groaned Marjory, "I wish I'd stayed home." "Mercy!" gulped Henrietta, "it's blowing my skin off." After that, no one had very much to say. The girls needed their breath for other purposes. With heads down and jackets pulled tightly about them, they started up the long hill with the wind in their faces. It was not a pleasant wind. Cold and cutting, it flung icy particles of snow against their cheeks, nipped their unprotected ears, stung their fingers and found the thin places in their garments. It rushed down their throats when they opened their mouths to speak, wrapped their petticoats so tightly about them that they had to keep unwinding themselves in order to walk at all, heaped the whirling snow in drifts and filled the air so full of flakes that it was only between gusts that the houses were visible. Worst of all, the way was very much uphill, and Mabel, besides being short of breath, was burdened with the basket of eggs. The snow seemed to take a delight in piling itself directly in front of them. "Ugh!" gasped Henrietta, "I wish my stockings were fur-lined. They thawed out in Mrs. Malony's and now they're frozen stiff. I don't like 'em." "Mine, too," panted Mabel. "And all my skirts," groaned Marjory. "The edges are like saws and they're scraping my knees." "How do you like a real storm?" queried Jean, steering Henrietta through a mighty drift.