SNOWBOUND
Tess said, gloomily, as they gathered about the study table one evening
not long after New Year's:
"I have to write a composition about George Washington. When was he
born, Ruthie?" Ruth was busy and did not appear to hear. "Say! when
_was_ he born?" repeated the ten-year-old.
"Eighteen seventy-eight, I think, dear," said Agnes, with more kindness
than confidence.
"Oh-o-o!" gasped Dot, who knew something about the "Father of His
Country." "He was dead-ed long before _that_."
"Before when?" demanded Ruth, partly waking up to the situation.
"Eighteen seventy-eight," repeated Tess, wearily.
"Of course I meant seventeen seventy-eight," interposed Agnes.
"And at that you're a long way off," observed Neale, who chanced to be
at the Corner House that evening.
"Well! you know so much, Mr. Smartie!" cried Agnes. "Tell her yourself."
"I wouldn't have given her the date of George's birth, as being right in
the middle of the Revolutionary War," exclaimed Neale, stalling for time
to figure out the right date.
"No; and you are not telling her _any_ year," said the wise Agnes.
"Children! don't scrap," murmured peace-loving Ruth, sinking into the
background--and her own algebra--again.
"Well!" complained Tess. "I haven't found out when he was born _yet_."
"Never mind, honey," said Agnes. "Tell what he _did_. That's more
important. Look up the date later."
"I know," said Dot, breaking in with more primary information. "He
planted a cherry tree."
"Chopped it down, you mean," said Agnes.
"And he never told a lie," insisted Dot.
"I believe that is an exploded doctrine," chuckled Neale O'Neil.
"Well, how did they _know_ he didn't tell a lie?" demanded Tess, the
practical.
"They never caught him in one," said Neale, with brutal frankness.
"There's a whole lot of folks honest like _that_."
"Goodness, Neale!" cried Ruth, waking up again at _that_ heresy. "How
pessimistic you are."
"Was--was George Washington one of those things?" queried Tess, liking
the sound of the long word.
"What things?" asked Ruth.
"Pes-sa-pessamisty?"
"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 snowballs rolled. They got right to work with him, and soon their
shrill laughter and jolly badinage assured 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 chores. 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.
"And Billy Bumps, too, sister! Don't forget Billy Bumps," 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 cumbersome 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 snowbound," 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
snowballs and make a pot of icicle soup."