“All right,” said Nancy. “Ow, my feet are cold. What about yours, Peggy?”
“Icicles.”
“We were a pair of mutton-headed galoots to go through the ice like that,” said Nancy, hopping up and down.
“Oughtn’t you to get your things off and dried at once?” said Susan.
“We must just see the place they did their signalling from.”
They all went up to the old barn, climbed the steps outside it and looked out from the loft. Dick showed them just how Dorothea and he had managed with the lantern, and Titty told Dorothea how she had first seen the flashes up on the hill-side.
“It’s a f-f-f-fine p-p-p-lace to signal from one settlement t-t-t-to another,” said Nancy, whose teeth were beginning to chatter.
“Shall we light the fire?” said Dorothea. “I’ve got some sticks and lots of newspaper.”
“Newspaper?” Susan and Peggy were staring at her. “Newspaper! For lighting a fire!”
They hurried down the steps and looked at the charred wood and ashes left from last night, and at the pile of sticks and at Dorothea’s bundle of newspaper.
“You’d better come along with us at once,” said Nancy, “and see how to make a fire and how to light it with one match and no paper at all. Ow! My feet are going to fall off.”
“We’d love to come,” said Dorothea.
“Doesn’t Mrs Dixon expect you back for dinner?” said Susan.
“She does rather,” said Dorothea.
“Well, you’d better tell her you’re going to be out. It’s no way down there. We’ll all come. March, Roger, or you’ll be getting cold, too.”
“C-come on,” said Nancy. “The P-p-p-polar exp-p-pedition v-v-visits the f-f-friendly Eskimos.”
“You wouldn’t like to go straight to the igloo and start the fire?” said Susan, looking at her.
“It’ll be all right as long as we k-k-k-keep moving,” said Captain Nancy and, followed by Peggy, she set off at full gallop down the cart track to Dixon’s Farm.
CHAPTER IV
THE IGLOO
MRS DIXON did not seem in the least surprised when Dick and Dorothea, who had set out alone, came back to the farm in a party of eight.
“You’ve not lost much time about it,” she said. “I was thinking you’d be running into each other somewhere. Well, Miss Ruth and Miss Peggy, and how’s your mother keeping, and what’s the news from your Uncle Jim? It seems no time since I was cooking toffees in the summer for you others when you came up to fetch the milk in the mornings. Time does flit on, to be sure.”
“Can we be out to dinner?” asked Dorothea.
“Glad to see the backs of you,” said Mrs Dixon. “I’ve washing to do to-day. You’ve come just at the right time, Miss Ruth, or Nancy is it? I’m forgetting. I’ve been meaning to send one of my pork pies to Mrs Blackett, and you can take it for me, and then you two can take another to make do for your dinner. And there’s a bag of toffees for the lot of you. Eh! come in, Dixon, none but old friends here.”
Mr Dixon was standing in the doorway.
“How do you do, Mr Dixon?” said Titty.
“How do you do?” said all the others.
“Champion, thank ye,” said Mr Dixon, and went off again out of the kitchen.
“And now then,” said Mrs Dixon, as she came back from the larder with two of the new pork pies, “what have you two lasses been doing with your shoes?”
Nancy and Peggy were holding first one foot and then the other towards the kitchen fire, and the steam was pouring up.
“The tarn,” said Peggy.
“I was sure it would be bearing all right,” said Nancy, “and it very nearly is, but I never thought about not going on both together. We were a bit galootish. At least I was.”
“Fair couple of gummocks, I’d call you,” said Mrs Dixon. “You’d best be having them shoes off and let me be drying the stockings.”
But the red-caps were in a hurry to get on.
“Yon’s the way to catch a death of cold,” said Mrs Dixon.
“We’ll be drying them in a few minutes,” said Nancy. “Come on, you others. Have you got knapsacks, you two?”
“They’re in our school trunks,” said Dorothea. “I’ll go and get them.”
“Never mind for now,” said Nancy. “I can put mother’s pork pie into my knapsack, and Peggy can put your one into hers.”
“What are you going to drink?” asked Mrs Dixon.
“Tea,” said Susan. “We’ve got milk to spare for them.”
“They’ll want a couple of mugs,” said Mrs Dixon.
“One between them,” said Nancy firmly. “Let them travel light.”
“And if one’s broken they’ll have none,” said Mrs Dixon, and she gave them two mugs, one of which was packed in Peggy’s knapsack and one in Nancy’s.
And with that the whole lot of them poured out of the hot farm kitchen into the cold air, out of the yard, across the road, through the gate, and away up the cart track to the barn.
Dorothea felt a little as if she had tumbled into a river and was being swept away in a strong current. Yesterday she and Dick had been alone as usual, just looking at things and planning stories, and now here they were in a crowd of eight, hurrying up the hill-side in the winter sunshine, with a pork pie for dinner in the knapsack of a girl they had only known about half an hour, going they did not know where, to do they did not know what. Eight of them! In all her stories there were usually not more than two, or at most four, and then perhaps a villain. She looked from face to face. But no, not one of these six strangers looked in the least like a villain. She found Titty walking beside her, and smiling at her in a very friendly way.
Dick was walking close in front of them, being questioned by Roger.
“Do you really know all about the stars?”
“I only know a few of them,” said Dick.
“I know the saucepan and the Pole star,” said Roger.
“The saucepan?”
“The one you find the Pole by.”
“It’s much more like a saucepan than some of the things they call it,” said Dick. “I’ve got a book that has them all in, all the constellations, at least. We’re going to watch them every night. Till we have to go.”
“Where’s your school?”
Close behind her came the four whom Dorothea put down in her mind as the elders, though she did not think that Peggy could be very much older than she was herself. She could not help hearing what they were talking about.
“Shiver my timbers, but why not?”
“An astronomer might be quite useful.”
“But what’s she going to do?”
“We’ll soon know if they’re any good.”
This was dreadful, and Dorothea hurried out of earshot along the frozen track, sweeping Titty with her, in pursuit of Dick and Roger, who had just broken into a run, to have another look at the observatory, even if the others should not mean to stop there.
“It’s a