Up on the bank, Mamie says, “I’ll tie them to that tree.” She refuses to let the leads out of her own hands, but she permits two of the boys to make the knots secure, as they have learned to do in the Scout Cubs.

Then it is boys against girls in a snow fight, with such fast pelting and splutters from drenched faces, such loud shrieks that the dogs’ coughing and whining can scarcely be heard. When it is time to go, Mamie counts the dogs. Then she starts to untie them. The knots are difficult. She calls after one of the boys to come and untie the knots, but he does not look around. Gwen returns; she stands and looks. Mamie is kneeling in the slush, trying.

“How do you untie these knots?” All the leads are mixed up in a knotted muddle.

“I don’t know. What’s their names?”

“Mitzi, Fritzi, Blitzi, Ritzi, and Kitzy.”

“Do you know one from the other?”

"No."

Mamie bends down with her strong teeth in the leather. She has loosened the first knot. All the knots are coming loose. She gets her woollen gloves on again and starts to wind the leads around her hands. One of them springs from her grasp, and the little dog scuttles away into the wood among the old wet leaves, so that it seems to slither like a snake on its belly with its cord bouncing behind it.

“Mitzi! Kitzy! Blitzi!”

The dog disappears and the four in hand are excited, anxious to be free and warmed up too.

“Catch him, Gwen! Can you see him? Where is it? Mitzi-mitzi-mitzi! Blitzi-blitzi!”

“I’ve got to go home,” Gwen says. “You shouldn’t have stopped to play.”

Gwen is Sister Monica’s model pupil for punctuality, neatness, and truthfulness. Mamie has no ground to answer Gwen’s reproach as the girl starts to clamber down the bank.

The wood is dark and there is no sound of the dog. Mamie squelches with the four dogs among the leaves and snow lumps. “Fritzi-fritzi-fritzi mitzi!” A bark, a yap, behind her. Again a yap-yap. She turns and finds the dog tied once more to a tree. Hamilton? She peers all around her and sees nobody.