Part 46 (1/2)
”You go ahead, father,” begged Jasper, ”and we'll all follow.”
So old Mr. King, with Phronsie and a guide on her farther side, led the way, and the red stockings and the brown and the black, and some of indescribable hue, moved off upon the _Mer de Glace_.
”It's dreadfully dirty,” said Adela, turning up her nose. ”I thought a glacier was white when you got up to it.”
”Oh, I think it is lovely!” cried Polly; ”and that green down in the creva.s.se--look, Adela!”
”It's a dirty green,” persisted Adela, whose artistic sense wouldn't be satisfied. ”O dear me!” as her foot slipped and she clutched Mrs.
Henderson, who happened to be next.
”Now, how about the woollen stockings?” asked Tom, while Polly and Jasper both sang out, ”Take care,” and ”Go slowly.”
Adela didn't answer, but stuck the sharp end of her alpenstock smartly into the ice.
”Something is the matter with my stocking,” at last said the parson's wife, stopping and holding out her right foot.
The guide nearest her stopped, too, and kneeling down on the ice, he pulled it into place, for it had slipped half off.
”Now be very careful,” warned Grandpapa, ”and don't venture too near the edge,” as he paused with Phronsie and the guide. The others, coming up, looked down into a round, green pool of water that seemed to stare up at them, as if to say, ”I am of unknown depth, so beware of me.”
”That gives me the 'creeps,' Polly, as you say,” Mrs. Henderson observed. ”Dear me, I shall never forget how that green water looks;”
and she s.h.i.+vered and edged off farther yet. ”Supposing any one _should_ fall in!”
”Well, he'd go down right straight through the globe, seems to me,”
said Tom, with a last look at the pool as they turned off, ”It looks as if it had no end, till one would fetch up on the other side.”
”I love to hop over these little creva.s.ses,” said Polly, and suiting the action to the word.
”Something is the matter with my stocking again,” announced Mrs.
Henderson to the guide, presently. ”I am sorry to trouble you, but it needs to be fixed.”
He didn't understand the words, but there was no mistaking the foot thrust out with the woollen sock, now wet and sodden, half off again.
So he kneeled down and pulled it on once more.
Before they reached the other side, the parson's wife had had that stocking pulled on six times, until at last, the guide, finding no more pleasure in a repet.i.tion of the performance, took a string from his pocket, and bunching up in his fist a good portion of the stocking heel, he wound the string around it and tied it fast, cut off the string, and returned the rest to his pocket.
”Why do you tie up the heel?” queried Mrs. Henderson. ”I should think it much better to secure it in front.” But he didn't understand, and the rest were quite a good bit in advance, and hating to give trouble, she went on, the stocking heel sticking out a few inches. But she kept it on her foot, so that might be called a success.
The little Widow Gray was not going over the _Mauvais Pas_, neither was Mrs. Selwyn, as she had traversed it twice before. So, on reaching the other side, they were just about bidding good-by to the others, when, without a bit of warning, the parson's wife, in turning around, fell flat, and disappeared to the view of some of them behind a boulder of ice.
All was confusion in an instant. The guides rushed--everybody rushed--pellmell to the rescue; Tom's long legs, as usual, getting him there first. There she was in a heap, in a depression of ice and snow and water.
”I'm all right, except”--and she couldn't help a grimace of pain--”my foot.”
The little doctor swept them all to one side, as they seated her on one of the boulders of ice. ”Humph! I should think likely,” at sight of the tied-up stocking heel. ”You stepped on that, and it flung you straight as a die and turned your foot completely over.”
”Yes,” said Mrs. Henderson. Then she saw the guide who had tied the stocking looking on with a face of great concern. ”Oh, don't say anything, it makes him feel badly,” she mumbled, wis.h.i.+ng her foot wouldn't ache so.