The remainder of that ride up the mountain was merely a nightmare for the girls. Lucas allowed the ponies to lose no time, despite the load they drew. But haste was imperative. A ducking in an icy mountain brook at this time of the year might easily be fraught with serious consequences. Although it was drawing toward noon and the sun was now shining, there was no great amount of warmth in the air. Lucas must have felt the keen wind himself, for he was wet, too; but he neither shivered nor complained. Luckily they were well up the mountainside when the accident occurred. The ponies flew around a bend where a grove of trees had shut off the view, and there lay the Pritchett house and outbuildings, fresh in their coat of whitewash. "Maw and Sairy'll see to ye now," cried Lucas, as he neatly clipped the gatepost with one hub and brought the lathered ponies to an abrupt stop in the yard beside the porch. "Hi, Maw!" he added, as a very stout woman appeared in the doorway--quite filling the opening, in fact. "Hi, Maw! Here's Mis' Hammon's nieces--an' one of 'em's been in Pounder's Brook!" "For the land's sake!" gasped the farmer's wife, pulling a pair of steel-bowed spectacles down from her brows that she might peer through them at the Bray girls. "Ain't it a mite airly for sech didoes as them?" "Why, Maw!" sputtered Lucas, growing red again. "She didn't _go_ for to do it--no, ma'am!" "Wa-al! I didn't know. City folks is funny. But come in--do! Mis' Hammon's nieces, d'ye say? Then you must be John Horrocks Bray's gals--ain't ye?" "We are," said Lyddy, who had quickly climbed out over the wheel and now eased down the clumsy bundle which was her sister. "Can you stand, 'Phemie?" "Ye-es," chattered her sister. "I hope you can take us in for a little while, Mrs. Pritchett," went on the older girl. "We are going up to Hillcrest to live." "Take ye in? Sure! An' 'twon't be the first city folks we've harbored," declared the lady, chuckling comfortably. "They're beginnin' to come as thick as spatters in summer to Bridleburg, an' some of 'em git clear up this way---- For the land's sake! that gal's as wet as sop." "It--it was wet water I tumbled into," stuttered 'Phemie. Mrs. Pritchett ushered them into the big, warm kitchen, where the table was already set for dinner. A young woman--not so _very_ young, either--as lank and lean as Lucas himself, was busy at the stove. She turned to stare at the visitors with near-sighted eyes. "This is my darter, Sairy," said "Maw" Pritchett. "She taught school two terms to Pounder's school; but it was bad for her eyes. I tell her to git specs; but she 'lows she's too young for sech things." "The oculists advise glasses nowadays for very young persons," observed Lyddy politely, as Sairy Pritchett bobbed her head at them in greeting. "So I tell her," declared the farmer's wife. "But she won't listen to reason. Ye know how young gals air!"