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There were the sleigh-rides, when you went out in style and had a supper and a dance; and the sledding parties, that were really the most fun of all, when you almost forgot you were grown-up. Cary was always ready to attend his cousin, though she quite as often went out with Mr. and Mrs. Gray and Eudora. When he thought of it, it did seem a little curious that Doris had no special company.
The snow was so deep that skating and ice boating were out of the question. But the young people could go on sledding excursions, which they did, Mr. Franklin furnishing the horses and sleigh. This was a new kind of fun, and was enjoyed to the utmost. They went to near-by towns, and had oyster suppers, going to informal dances afterward. Mr.
Tommy had had sledding in his own yard; but he had never before had any real coasting like this, and he had never dreamed before of anything like the thrill of dashing down that long hill, flying like the wind, with Johnny on behind, yelling "Look out!" to every one, and guiding so that the sled tore in and out among the others, and at the foot of the hill actually turned around the curve and went far on down the road.
Now, if there were sun enough for the sap to rise, it would melt the snow; and if it were cold enough for sledding, it must be too cold for the syrup. There seemed an impossibility about the whole thing. The little boys, however, said there always had been maple sugar every spring, they had eaten it; why shouldn't there be this spring?
On days and nights in the old-fashioned winters, when the sledding of big logs to the sawmill on Ponkapoag brook had made the course down the hill one glare of adamantine snow between deep rifts, the population of the village used to turn out; not the big and little boys and girls only, but the grown-ups even to the venerable gaffers of those days who could remember how they used to coast there before the Civil War was thought of, when the Cherry Tavern still fed scores of pleasure-seeking Bostonians on big, luscious black-heart cherries each June, and in winter the Ponkapoag Inn had its patrons from the big city not only for coasting but for pickerel fishing on the pond.
And if the sun isn't shining, on rainy days, more play and games in the play-room, or about the house, or somewhere under shelter. Marbles and tops and kites; jumping rope, rolling hoops, making pin-wheels; skating, sledding, snow-balling; baseball, fishing, tennis; leap-frog, running, climbing trees; and dozens of other pastimes, too numerous to think of.
He had supposed the hardest sledding would be over when he had won the father's consent. He had authentic inside information that the son had stakes other than financial. He counted on youth's imperious urge to happiness. The lad had done without Carlotta for two months now. It had seemed probable he would be more amenable to reason in August than he had been in June.
"Why, winter always means through sledding!" "I'm afraid not, in law," said Addison, looking puzzled. "Winter ends either the first or the twenty-first of March. I think a good argument could be made in court for the twenty-first. But she may be right, and it's too late to take chances. The only thing to do is to get that lumber off right away."
It looks like "the faith that lays it down and dies." Slow, hard sledding is this kind of farming, but it is this kind of dauntless faith that made Phoenix and made Yuma and made Imperial Valley. Twenty years ago, you could squat on Imperial Valley Land. To-day it costs $1,000 an acre and yields high percentage on that investment. To-day you can buy Casa Grande lands from $5 to $25 an acre.
The winter sledding was over; the snow had gone off a month back with the first warm rain; just that afternoon he had made the last trip behind his heavy team down from the big timber back on the ridges, but during that month the other drivers with whom he had been hauling logs since fall had talked of nothing but the coming event.
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