Jack Frost might stop the mail, but he could not stop the gayeties of the season. “Wooden frolics” and quilting-parties and candy-pullings and infares and Baptist revival-meetings had been as frequent as ever; and part of Matt’s enjoyment of his couch was a delicious sense of oversleeping himself legitimately, for even his mother could hardly expect him to build the fire at five when he had only returned from Deacon Hailey’s “muddin’ frolic” at two. He saw himself coasting down the white slopes in his hand-sled, watching the wavering radiance of the northern lights that paled the moon and the stars, and wishing his mother would not spoil the after-glow of the night’s pleasure and the poetic silence of the woods by grumbling about his grown-up sister Harriet, who had deserted them for an earlier escort home. He felt himself well rewarded for his afternoon’s labor in loading marsh mud for the top-dressing of Deacon Hailey’s fields; and a sudden remembrance of how his mother had been rewarded for helping Mrs. Hailey to prepare the feast made him nudge Billy in his turn.
“Cheer up, Billy. We’ve brought back a basket o’ goodies: there’s plum-cake, doughnuts--”
“It’s gettin’ worst,” said Billy. “Hark!”
Matt mumbled impatiently and redirected his thoughts to the “muddin’ frolic.” The images of the night swept before him with almost the vividness of actuality; he lost himself in memories as though they were realities, and every now and then a dash of sleep streaked these waking visions with the fantasy of dream.
“My, how the fiddle shrieks!” runs the boy’s reminiscence. “Why don’t ole Jupe do his tunin’ to home, the pesky nigger? We’re all waitin’ for the reel--the ‘fours’ are all made up; Ruth Hailey and me hev took the floor. Ruth looks jest great with thet white frock an’ the pink sash, thet’s a fact. Hooray!--‘The Devil among the Tailors!’--La, lalla, lalla, lalla, lalla, flip-flop!” He hears the big winter top-boots thwack the threshing-floor. Keep it up! Whoop! Faster! Ever faster! Oh, the joy of life!