ON THE TELEPHONE


When the young people returned to the ballroom, it presented a
decidedly changed appearance. Instead of an interior scene, it was a
winter landscape.

The floor was covered with snow-white canvas, not laid on smoothly,
but rumpled over bumps and hillocks, like a real snow field. The
numerous palms and evergreens that had decorated the room, were
powdered with flour and strewn with tufts of cotton, like snow. Also
diamond dust had been lightly sprinkled on them, and glittering
crystal icicles hung from the branches.

At each end of the room, on the wall, hung a beautiful bear-skin
rug.

These rugs were for prizes, one for the girls and one for the boys.
And this was the game.

The girls were gathered at one end of the room and the boys at the
other, and one end was called the North Pole, and the other the
South Pole. Each player was given a small flag which they were to
plant on reaching the Pole.

This would have been an easy matter, but each traveller was obliged
to wear snowshoes. These were not the real thing, but smaller
affairs made of pasteboard. But when they were tied on, the wearer
felt clumsy indeed, and many of the girls declared they could not