The Corner House Girls at School Part 30

"And Billy b.u.mps, too, sister! Don't forget Billy b.u.mps," begged Tess from the porch.

"We'll try it, anyway," said Ruth. "Here are all the shovels, and we ought to be able to do it."

"Boys would," proclaimed Agnes.

"Neale would do it," echoed Dot, who had come out upon the porch likewise.

"I declare! I wish Neale were here right now," Ruth said.

"'If wishes were horses, beggars could ride,'" quoted Agnes. "Come on, Ruthie! I guess it's up to us."

First they went back into the kitchen to put on the warmest things they had--boots to keep their feet dry, and sweaters under their school coats, with stockingnet caps drawn down over their ears.

"I not only wish we _had_ a boy in the family," grumbled Agnes, "but I wish _I_ were that boy. What c.u.mbersome clothes girls have to wear!"

"What do you want to wear--overalls and a jumper?" demanded Ruth, tartly.

"Fine!" cried her reckless sister. "If the suffragettes would demand the right to wear male garments instead of to vote, I'd be a suffragette in a minute!"

"Disgraceful!" murmured Ruth.

"What?" cried Agnes, grinning. "To be a suffragette? Nothing of the kind! Lots of nice ladies belong to the party, and _we_ may yet."

They had already been to the front of the old Corner House. A huge drift filled the veranda; they could not see Main Street save from the upper windows. And the flakes were still floating steadily downward.

"We're really s...o...b..und," said Agnes, in some awe. "Do you suppose we have enough to eat in the house, to stand a long siege?"

"If we haven't," said Mrs. MacCall, from the pantry, "I'll fry you some s...o...b..a.l.l.s and make a pot of icicle soup."

CHAPTER XIX

THE ENCHANTED CASTLE

It was plain that the streets would not be cleared _that_ day. If the girls were able to get to school by the following Monday they would be fortunate.

None of the four had missed a day since the schools had opened in September, and from Ruth down, they did not wish to be marked as absent on their reports. This blizzard that had seized Milton in its grasp, however, forced the Board of Education to announce in the _Post_ that pupils of all grades would be excused until the streets were moderately pa.s.sable.

"Poor people will suffer a good deal, I am afraid," Ruth said, on this very first forenoon of their being s...o...b..und.

"Our folks on Meadow Street," agreed Agnes. "I hope Mrs. Kranz will be kind to them."

"But we oughtn't to expect Mrs. Kranz, or Joe Maroni, to give away their food and coal. Then _they'd_ soon be poor, too," said the earnest Ruth.

"I tell you what, Aggie!"

"Well--shoot!"

Ruth overlooked her sister's slang for once. "We should leave money with Mrs. Kranz to help our poor folk, when we can't get over there to see them so frequently."

"Goodness, Ruth!" grumbled Agnes. "We won't have any spending money left for ourselves if we get into this charity game any deeper."

"Aren't you ashamed?" cried Ruth.

Agnes only laughed. They both knew that Agnes did not mean all that she said.

Ruth was already attacking the loose, fluffy snow under the arbor, and Agnes seized a spade and followed her older sister. It did not take such a great effort to get to the end of the arbor; but beyond that a great ma.s.s of hard-packed snow confronted them. Ruth could barely see over it.

"Oh, dear me!" groaned Agnes. "We'll never be able to dig a path through _that_."

This looked to be true to the older girl, too; so she began thinking.

But it was Dot, trying to peer around the bigger girls' elbows, who solved the problem.

"Oh, my! how nice it would be to have a ladder and climb up to the top of that s...o...b..nk," she cried. "Maybe we could go over to Mabel Creamer's, right over the fence and all, Tess!"

"Hurray!" shouted Agnes. "We can cut steps in the bank, Ruth. Dot has given us a good idea--hasn't she?"

"I believe she has," agreed the oldest Kenway.

Although the snow had floated down so softly at first (and was now coming in feathery particles) during the height of the storm, the wind had blown and it had been so cold that the drifts were packed hard.

Without much difficulty the girls made four steps up out of the mouth of the grape-arbor, to the surface of the drift. Then they tramped a path on top to the door of the henhouse.

By this same entrance they could get to the goat's quarters. The snow had drifted completely over the henhouse, but that only helped to keep the hens and Billy b.u.mps warm.

Later the girls tunneled through the great drift at the back porch, leaving a thick arch which remained for the rest of the week. So they got a path broken to the gate on Willow Street.

The snowman had disappeared to his shoulders. It continued to snow most of that day and the grape-arbor path became a perfect tunnel.

There was no school until Monday. Even then the streets were almost impa.s.sable for vehicles. The Highway Department of the town was removing the drifts in the roads and some of this excavated snow was dumped at the end of the Parade Ground, opposite the schools.

The boys hailed these piles of snow as being fine for fortifications, and s...o...b..ll battles that first day waxed furious.

Then the leading spirits among the boys--including Neale O'Neil--put their heads together and the erection of the enchanted castle was begun.

But more of _that_ anon.

Tess had had plenty of time to write that composition on the "Father of His Country." Indeed, Miss Andrews should have had a collection of wonderfully good biographical papers handed in by her cla.s.s on that Monday morning.

But Tess's was not all that might be desired as a sketch of George Washington's life, and the teacher told her so. Still, she did better with her subject than Sadie Goronofsky did with hers.

Sadie had been given Longfellow to write about, and Miss Andrews showed the composition to Agnes' teacher as an example of what could be done in the line of disseminating _mis_information about the Dead and the Great.

Miss Shipman allowed Agnes to read it.

"Longfellow was a grand man; he wrote both poems and poetry. He graduated at Bowdoin and afterward taught in the same school where he graduated. He didn't like teaching and decided to learn some other trade, so his school furnished him money to go to Europe and learn to be a poet. After that he wrote many beautiful rhymes for children. He wrote 'Billy, the Blacksmith,' and Hiwater, what I seen in a pitcher show."

"Well, Sadie maybe doesn't know much about poets," said Tess, reflectively, when she heard her older sisters laughing about the funny composition. "But she knows numbers, and can multiply and divide. But then, Maria Maroni can make change at her father's stand, and she told Miss Andrews of all the holidays, she liked most the Fourth of July, because that was when America was discovered. Of course _that_ isn't so," concluded Tess.