Page:Girls of Central High on the Stage.djvu/86

76 straightened up the hall and dining room after the young folk with great cheerfulness.

"Yo' know how yo' was yo'self, Miss Annie, w'en yo' was oberflowin' wid de sperits ob youth," she said, soothingly.

"I am sure I never overflowed quite so boisterously," sighed Mrs. Belding.

"No. Yo' warn't one ob de oberflowin' kind, Miss Annie," admitted the old black woman. "But Mars' Chet an' Miss Laura, and dem friends ob theirs, sartain sure kin kick up a mighty combobberation—yaas'm!"

The wintry wind blew sharply past the crowd of Central High Juniors as the Belding auto and the bigger machine struck a fast pace when once they had cleared the city. There was lots of fun in the autos on the way to the Sitz farm; but they were all glad to tumble out there and crowd into the big kitchen "for a warm."

The Swiss family were the most hospitable people in the world. Eve's mother had a great heap of hot cakes ready for them, and there was coffee, too, to drive out the cold.

"We're going to take Patrick down to the pond with us to keep up the fires while we're skating," Eve told Laura. Eve looked very pretty in her skating rig, and she was a splendid skater, too. "Father and Otto are somewhere