CHAPTER XVIII
SNOWBOUND
Tess said, gloomily, as they gathered about the study table one eveningnot long after New Year's:
"I have to write a composition about George Washington. When was heborn, 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 kindnessthan confidence.
"Oh-o-o!" gasped Dot, who knew something about the "Father of HisCountry." "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 beat 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 inthe middle of the Revolutionary War," exclaimed Neale, stalling for timeto 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 thebackground--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 moreimportant. Look up the date later."
"I know," said Dot, breaking in with more primary information. "Heplanted 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, thepractical.
"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. "Howpessimistic you are."
"Was--was George Washington one of those things?" queried Tess, likingthe sound of the long word.
"What things?" asked Ruth.
"Pes-sa-pessamisty?"
"Pessimistic? No, dear," laughed Ruth. "He was an optimist--or he neverwould have espoused the American cause."
"He was first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of hiscoun-try-men," sing-songed Dot.
"Oh, yes! I can put that in," agreed Tess, abandoning both the hardwords Ruth had used, and getting back to safe details. "And he married alady named Mary, didn't he?"
"No; Martha," said Agnes.
"Well, I knew it was one or the other, for we studied about Mary andMartha 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, "forGeorge 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, ora bug?"
"Why, my teacher told us about George Washington," cried Dot, withimportance, "only a little while ago. And she said they raised a cabalagainst him----"
"That means a conspiracy," put in Ruth, quietly. "How can you folksstudy 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 thesister 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 howI am _ever_ going to finish it."
"Oh, dear me, Tess! Let that old composition go for to-night," beggedAgnes. "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'sparty?" asked Ruth, interested.
"Just come out on the porch and see," advised the boy, and they alltrooped out after him--even Tess putting down her pencil and followingat the rear of the procession.
It must have been snowing ever since supper time, for the lower step wasalready covered, and the air was thick with great, fleecy flakes, whichpiled drifts rapidly about every object in the Corner House back yard.
A prolonged "Oh!" came from every one. The girls could not see thestreet fence. The end of the woodshed was the limit of their vision downthe long yard. Two or three fruit trees loomed like drooping ghosts inthe 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'thave to bother about that old composition until another day."
Agnes was closely investigating the condition of the snow. "See!" shesaid, "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 severalhuge snowballs rolled. They got right to work with him, and soon theirshrill laughter and jolly badinage assured all the neighborhood that theCorner House girls were out for a good time.
Yet the heavily falling snow seemed to cut them off like a wall fromevery 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 famoussnowman, with a bucket for a cap, lumps of coal for eyes and nose, andstuck into its mouth an old long-stemmed clay pipe belonging to UncleRufus.
He was a jaunty looking snowman for a little while; but although he wasso tall that the top of his hat was level with the peak of the woodshedroof, before the Corner House girls went to bed he stood more than kneedeep in the drifted snow.
Neale had to make the round of his furnaces. Fortunately they were allin the neighborhood, but he had a stiff fight to get through the stormto the cobbler's little cottage before midnight.
At that "witching hour," if any of the Corner House girls had been awakeand had looked out of the window, they would have seen that the snowmanwas then buried to his waist!
When daylight should have appeared, snow was still falling. A wind hadarisen, and on one side of the old Corner House the drift entirelymasked the windows. At eight o'clock they ate breakfast by lamplight.
Uncle Rufus did not get downstairs early, as he usually did, and whenTess ran up to call him, she found the old man groaning in his bed, andunable 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 smallcylinder stove in his room (it was in the cold wing of the house) andshe carried up kindling and a pail of coal and made a fire for him. ThenTess and Dot carried up his hot breakfast on one of the best trays, witha nice white napkin laid over it.
"Glo-_ree_! Chillen, yo' mak' a 'ninvalid out o' Unc' Rufus, an' henebber wanter git up out'n hes baid at all. I don't spec' w'ite folksesto 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; buta great drift had heaped up before it--higher than Rut
h's head. The wayto 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, andat the other end of the shed was a second door that opened upon thearbor path. The trellised grapevine extended ten yards from this door.
Ruth and Agnes ventured to this end door of the shed, and opened theswinging window in it. There was plenty of soft, fluffy snow under thegrape-arbor, but not more than knee deep.
Against the arbor, on the storm side, the drift had packed up to thevery top of the structure--and it was packed hard; but the lattice onthe side had broken the snowfall and the path under the arbor couldeasily be cleared.
"Then we can get to the henhouse, Ruthie," said Agnes.
"And Billy Bumps, too, sister! Don't forget Billy Bumps," begged Tessfrom the porch.
"We'll try it, anyway," said Ruth. "Here are all the shovels, and weought to be able to do it."
"Boys would," proclaimed Agnes.
"Neale would do it," echoed Dot, who had come out upon the porchlikewise.
"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 theyhad--boots to keep their feet dry, and sweaters under their schoolcoats, with stockingnet caps drawn down over their ears.
"I not only wish we _had_ a boy in the family," grumbled Agnes, "but Iwish _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 theright to wear male garments instead of to vote, I'd be a suffragette ina minute!"
"Disgraceful!" murmured Ruth.
"What?" cried Agnes, grinning. "To be a suffragette? Nothing of thekind! 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 driftfilled the veranda; they could not see Main Street save from the upperwindows. And the flakes were still floating steadily downward.
"We're really snowbound," said Agnes, in some awe. "Do you suppose wehave 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 somesnowballs and make a pot of icicle soup."