The Corner House Girls at School Part 29

"Pessimistic? No, dear," laughed Ruth. "He was an optimist--or he never would have espoused the American cause."

"He was first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his coun-try-men," sing-songed Dot.

"Oh, yes! I can put that in," agreed Tess, abandoning both the hard words Ruth had used, and getting back to safe details. "And he married a lady named Mary, didn't he?"

"No; Martha," said Agnes.

"Well, I knew it was one or the other, for we studied about Mary and Martha in our Sunday school lesson last Sunday," Tess said, placidly.

"Martha was troubled about many things."

"I should think she would have been," remarked Dot, reflectively, "for George Washington had to fight Indians, and Britishers, and Hessians (who wore blue coats and big hats) and cabals----"

"Hold on!" shouted Neale. "What under the sun is a 'cabal'? A beast, or a bug?"

"Why, my teacher told us about George Washington," cried Dot, with importance, "only a little while ago. And she said they raised a cabal against him----"

"That means a conspiracy," put in Ruth, quietly. "How can you folks study when you all talk so much?"

"Well, Martha," began Tess, when Ruth interposed:

"Don't get your Marthas mixed, dear."

"That's right, Tess," said Agnes. "George Washington's wife was not the sister of Lazarus--that's sure!"

"Oh, Aggie! how slangy you are!" cried Ruth.

Neale had slipped out after last speaking. He came in all of a bustle, stamping the snow from his feet on the hall rug.

"It's begun, girls!" he cried.

"Ye-es," admitted Tess, gravely. "I know it's begun; but I don't see how I am _ever_ going to finish it."

"Oh, dear me, Tess! Let that old composition go for to-night," begged Agnes. "Do you mean it has begun to snow, Neale?"

"Like a regular old blizzard," declared Neale.

"Is it snowing as hard as it did the night we came from Carrie Poole's party?" asked Ruth, interested.

"Just come out on the porch and see," advised the boy, and they all trooped out after him--even Tess putting down her pencil and following at the rear of the procession.

It must have been snowing ever since supper time, for the lower step was already covered, and the air was thick with great, fleecy flakes, which piled drifts rapidly about every object in the Corner House back yard.

A prolonged "Oh!" came from every one. The girls could not see the street fence. The end of the woodshed was the limit of their vision down the long yard. Two or three fruit trees loomed like drooping ghosts in the storm.

"Wonderful! wonderful!" cried Ruth.

"No school to-morrow," Agnes declared.

"Well, I shall be glad, for one thing," said the worried Tess. "I won't have to bother about that old composition until another day."

Agnes was closely investigating the condition of the snow. "See!" she said, "it packs beautifully. Let's make a snowman."

"Goody-good!" squealed Dot. "That'll be _fun_!"

"I--don't--know," said Ruth, slowly. "It's late now----"

"But there'll be no school, Ruthie," Tess teased.

"Come on!" said Neale. "We can make a dandy."

"Well! Let us put on our warm things--and tell Mrs. MacCall," Ruth said, willing to be persuaded to get out into the white drifts.

When the girls came out, wrapped to the eyes, Neale already had several huge s...o...b..a.l.l.s rolled. They got right to work with him, and soon their shrill laughter and jolly badinage a.s.sured all the neighborhood that the Corner House girls were out for a good time.

Yet the heavily falling snow seemed to cut them off like a wall from every other habitation. They could not even see the Creamers'

cottage--and that was the nearest house.

It was great fun for the girls and their boy friend. They built a famous snowman, with a bucket for a cap, lumps of coal for eyes and nose, and stuck into its mouth an old long-stemmed clay pipe belonging to Uncle Rufus.

He was a jaunty looking snowman for a little while; but although he was so tall that the top of his hat was level with the peak of the woodshed roof, before the Corner House girls went to bed he stood more than knee deep in the drifted snow.

Neale had to make the round of his furnaces. Fortunately they were all in the neighborhood, but he had a stiff fight to get through the storm to the cobbler's little cottage before midnight.

At that "witching hour," if any of the Corner House girls had been awake and had looked out of the window, they would have seen that the snowman was then buried to his waist!

When daylight should have appeared, snow was still falling. A wind had arisen, and on one side of the old Corner House the drift entirely masked the windows. At eight o'clock they ate breakfast by lamplight.

Uncle Rufus did not get downstairs early, as he usually did, and when Tess ran up to call him, she found the old man groaning in his bed, and unable to rise.

"I done got de mis'ry in my back, chile," he said, feebly. "Don' yo'

worry 'bout me none; I'll be cropin' down erbout noon."

But Mrs. MacCall would not hear to his moving. There was a small cylinder stove in his room (it was in the cold wing of the house) and she carried up kindling and a pail of coal and made a fire for him. Then Tess and Dot carried up his hot breakfast on one of the best trays, with a nice white napkin laid over it.

"Glo-_ree_! Chillen, yo' mak' a 'ninvalid out o' Unc' Rufus, an' he nebber wanter git up out'n hes baid at all. I don't spec' w'ite folkses to wait on me han' an' foot disher way--naw'm!"

"You're going to be treated just like one of the family, Uncle Rufus,"

cheerfully cried Ruth, who had likewise climbed the stairs to see him.

But somebody must do the ch.o.r.es. The back porch was mainly cleared; but a great drift had heaped up before it--higher than Ruth's head. The way to the side gate was shut off unless they tunneled through this drift.

At the end of the porch, however, was the entrance to the woodshed, and at the other end of the shed was a second door that opened upon the arbor path. The trellised grapevine extended ten yards from this door.

Ruth and Agnes ventured to this end door of the shed, and opened the swinging window in it. There was plenty of soft, fluffy snow under the grape-arbor, but not more than knee deep.

Against the arbor, on the storm side, the drift had packed up to the very top of the structure--and it was packed hard; but the lattice on the side had broken the snowfall and the path under the arbor could easily be cleared.

"Then we can get to the henhouse, Ruthie," said Agnes.