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November, with its bright, bleak skies, sere leaves tossing, sad winds sobbing, and rains that wept for days and nights together, on dead flowers and dying grasses, moaned itself away at last, and December swept into its place with a good rousing snow-storm, merry sleigh-bells, and bright promises of coming Christmas. The girls coasted and skated, and made snow-men and snowballs and snow-forts.
The jingling of sleigh-bells made itself heard on the road below as though to rebuke him, and presently a cry of fright from Esther at the window told that she knew what was before her. "What shall I do?" she cried breathlessly. "Here he is! I can't see him! I can't go through that scene again. George! won't you stop him?" "What under the sun are you afraid of?" said Strong. "He'll not shoot you!
Duane's unrestrained laughter excited her merriment; the star-lit woodlands rang with it and the treble chiming of the sleigh-bells. "What on earth will he find to do now?" asked Duane. "He's going to see it through, he says. Isn't it fine of him? There is just a bare chance that he may discover something that those prying entomological people overlooked.
Their way of thanks lay among stumbling words and vague repetitions, but there was a kind of glory in their grateful faces, and one always remembers that. "Merry Prismas, gramma ladies!" Viola cried shrilly at the 'bus door, and within they laughed like mothers as they answered. And Jimmy Sturgis cracked his whip, and the sleigh-bells jingled.
"All she wants to finish it off is two tin dippers and a set of sleigh-bells. I saw a squaw do that once. There's no telling what they won't put on. But I say, jedge, that there littler one is a born lady, and she's right down good-lookin' too. All she needs is good dressin' and she'd kind o' shine."
His accordion, manipulated with great skill, was augmented by sleigh-bells attached to his ankles in such a manner that a minimum of movement produced a maximum of effect; he further added to the complexity of sound and rhythm by striking a cymbal occasionally with one of his feet.
"I suspect I should have died but for your thoughtful care, Dougall," I said, gratefully, as the good fellow assisted to place me in the vehicle and wrap the buffalo robes around me. "Hoots! Muster Maxby," was the remonstrative reply. Big Otter placed himself in front of the cortege to beat the track. The dogs followed him with the sleigh-bells ringing merrily.
I need only to look back about ten short months and think of those crystal-clear winter days of ours, with the sleigh piled up with its warm bear-robes, the low sun on the endless sea of white, the air like champagne, the spanking team frosted with their own breath, the caroling sleigh-bells, and the man who still meant so much to me at my side.
And he said something to Mother in a low voice Marmaduke could not hear what it was then he patted the little soldier on the head and said good-bye. Again the sleigh-bells sounded and away he drove. But the sleigh-bells never stopped. They kept sounding all the night, long after Teddy was back in his stall and the big sleigh was in the shed. You see Marmaduke was very sick and "out of his head."
Cynthia caught a glimpse of him, and love suddenly welled up into her heart as waters into a spring after a drought. He had not seen her, not heard the sound of the sleigh-bells.
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