What was the difficulty with Sally? The suggestion that they go for a walk had been her own, and yet at present she looked as uncomfortable and annoyed as Sally ever permitted herself to appear. Undoubtedly she must be angry or troubled by some recent occurrence. Alice did not consider that this offered a sufficient excuse for Sally’s entire lack of interest. The new cousin, Philip Stead, might have been an inanimate object walking between them. Sally looked extremely pretty, with more color than usual, due to the sharp cold. She was wearing Mrs. Burton’s old seal-skin coat and cap, Aunt Patricia having presented the Camp Fire guardian with handsomer ones at the beginning of the winter in the Adirondacks. And Sally’s eyes and hair were nearly of the same shade and softness as the brown furs. Notwithstanding, she was frowning and her lips had a pouting, sullen look like a disappointed child’s. Not appreciating the reason Alice was puzzled and at the same time grateful that the new cousin did not appear disturbed by Sally’s indifference, but sufficiently interested in her to make the task of amusing him simpler than she had imagined possible. Alice was right. Sally was annoyed, she was even unhappy, although she would scarcely have agreed to this. During the entire winter at Half Moon Lake had she not been looking forward almost daily to Dan Webster’s visit at Christmas time? Since their parting in France she and Dan had written each other occasionally, but neither of them wrote especially well, so that the letters were not very satisfactory. Well, Dan had arrived and so far they had exchanged exactly eight words, the self-same words, save for the interchange of names: “Hello, Sally, I am glad to see you,” and her own reply with no more warmth or originality. To herself at any rate she could confess that she had proposed a walk in order that she and Dan might have a brief time together without half a dozen or more persons surrounding them. If Dan only had made an effort to walk beside her they might easily have arranged to drop a few paces behind the others. But Dan had made no such effort and apparently had no such thought. Already he and Mary Gilchrist were speeding on an eighth of a mile ahead, Mary’s golden scarf and Dan’s blue one, whipped by the wind, were like gay pennants urging the stragglers to follow. But Sally could not walk rapidly on the icy ground and already was out of breath. Neither had she any interest in the arrival at the summit of the hill, since the thought of the tobogganing terrified her and she had no wish to confess the fact. Reaching the top of the hill, Sally allowed Bettina Graham, her sister Alice, and Peggy Webster to reveal their Camp Fire prowess by starting a fire from the oily bark of a white birch tree, while Dan Webster, Philip Stead and Mary Gilchrist made the original test of the toboggan slide.