CHAPTER XIX
THE ENCHANTED CASTLE
It was plain that the streets would not be cleared _that_ day. If thegirls were able to get to school by the following Monday they would befortunate.
None of the four had missed a day since the schools had opened inSeptember, and from Ruth down, they did not wish to be marked as absenton their reports. This blizzard that had seized Milton in its grasp,however, forced the Board of Education to announce in the _Post_ thatpupils of all grades would be excused until the streets were moderatelypassable.
"Poor people will suffer a good deal, I am afraid," Ruth said, on thisvery first forenoon of their being snowbound.
"Our folks on Meadow Street," agreed Agnes. "I hope Mrs. Kranz will bekind to them."
"But we oughtn't to expect Mrs. Kranz, or Joe Maroni, to give away theirfood 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 withMrs. Kranz to help our poor folk, when we can't get over there to seethem so frequently."
"Goodness, Ruth!" grumbled Agnes. "We won't have any spending money leftfor 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 shesaid.
Ruth was already attacking the loose, fluffy snow under the arbor, andAgnes seized a spade and followed her older sister. It did not take sucha great effort to get to the end of the arbor; but beyond that a greatmass 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, whosolved the problem.
"Oh, my! how nice it would be to have a ladder and climb up to the topof that snowbank," she cried. "Maybe we could go over to MabelCreamer's, right over the fence and all, Tess!"
"Hurray!" shouted Agnes. "We can cut steps in the bank, Ruth. Dot hasgiven 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 nowcoming in feathery particles) during the height of the storm, the windhad 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 ofthe grape-arbor, to the surface of the drift. Then they tramped a pathon top to the door of the henhouse.
By this same entrance they could get to the goat's quarters. The snowhad drifted completely over the henhouse, but that only helped to keepthe hens and Billy Bumps 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 theygot a path broken to the gate on Willow Street.
The snowman had disappeared to his shoulders. It continued to snow mostof that day and the grape-arbor path became a perfect tunnel.
There was no school until Monday. Even then the streets were almostimpassable for vehicles. The Highway Department of the town was removingthe drifts in the roads and some of this excavated snow was dumped atthe end of the Parade Ground, opposite the schools.
The boys hailed these piles of snow as being fine for fortifications,and snowball battles that first day waxed furious.
Then the leading spirits among the boys--including Neale O'Neil--puttheir 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 ofHis Country." Indeed, Miss Andrews should have had a collection ofwonderfully good biographical papers handed in by her class on thatMonday morning.
But Tess's was not all that might be desired as a sketch of GeorgeWashington's life, and the teacher told her so. Still, she did betterwith her subject than Sadie Goronofsky did with hers.
Sadie had been given Longfellow to write about, and Miss Andrews showedthe composition to Agnes' teacher as an example of what could be done inthe 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 funnycomposition. "But she knows numbers, and can multiply and divide. Butthen, Maria Maroni can make change at her father's stand, and she toldMiss Andrews of all the holidays, she liked most the Fourth of July,because that was when America was discovered. Of course _that_ isn'tso," concluded Tess.
"When was it discovered?" asked Ruth.
"Oh, I know! I know!" cried Dot, perilously balancing a spoonful of mushand milk on the way to her mouth, in midair. "It was in 1492 atThanksgiving time, and the Pilgrim Fathers found it first. So theycalled it Plymouth Rock--and you've got some of their hens in yourhen-yard, Ruthie."
"My goodness!" gasped Agnes, after she had laughed herself almost out ofher chair over this. "These primary minds are like sieves, aren't they?All the information goes through, while the mis-information sticks."
"Huh!" said Tess, vexed for the moment. "You needn't say anything,Aggie. You told us George Washington was born in 1778 and teacher gaveme a black mark on _that_."
As that week progressed and the cold weather continued, a reallywonderful structure was raised on the Parade Ground opposite the maindoor of the Milton High School. The boys called it the snow castle and areporter for the _Post_ wrote a piece about it even before it wasfinished.
Boys of all grades, from the primary up, had their "fingers in the pie";for the very youngest could roll big snowballs on the smooth lawns ofthe Parade at noon when the sun was warm, and draw them to the site ofthe castle on their sleds after school was over for the day.
The bigger boys built up the walls, set in the round windows of ice,which were frozen each night in washtubs and brought carefully to thecastle. The doorway was a huge arch, with a sheet of ice set in at thetop like a fanlight over an old-fashioned front door. A flat roof wasmade of planks, with snow shoveled upon them and tramped down.
Several pillars of fence rails were set up inside to keep the roof fromsagging; then the castle was swept out, the floor smoothed, and thegirls were allowed to enter.
It was a fine, big snowhouse, all of forty feet long and half as wide.It was as large as a small moving picture place.
Somebody suggested having moving pictures in it--or a magic lanternshow, but Joe Eldred, one of the bigger high school boys, whose fatherwas superintendent of the Milton Electric Lighting Company, had a betteridea than that.
On Thursday, when the castle was all finished, and the _Post_ had spokenof it, Joe went to his father and begged some wire and rigging, and theboys chipped in to buy several sixty-watt lamps.
Joe Eldred was a young electrician himself, and Neale O'Neil aided him,for Neale seemed to know a lot about electric lighting. When his matescalled him "the circus boy," Neale scowled and said nothing, but he wastoo good-natured and polite to refuse to help in any general plan forfun like this now under way.
Joe got a permit from Mr. Eldred and then they connected up the lampsthey had strung inside the castle and at the entrance, with the citylighting cables.
At dusk that Thursday evening, the snowhouse suddenly burst intoillumination. The sheets of clear ice made good windows. Christmasgreens were festooned over the entrance, and around the walls within.
After supper the boys and girls gath
ered in and about the snow castle;somebody brought a talking machine from home and played some dancerecords. The older girls, and some of the boys, danced.
But the castle was not ornate enough to suit the builders. The next daythey ran up a false-front with a tower at either side. These towers werepartly walled with ice, too, and the boys illuminated them that night.
Saturday the boys were busier than ever, and they spread broadcast theannouncement of a regular "ice-carnival" for that evening.
After the crowd had gone away on Friday night, a few of the boysremained and flooded the floor of the castle. This floor was nowsmoothly frozen, and the best skaters were invited to come Saturdaynight and "show off."
By evening, too, the battlements of the castle had been raised on allfour sides. At each corner was a lighted tower, and in the middle of theroof a taller pinnacle had been raised with a red, white, and blue star,in colored electric bulbs, surmounting it.
Milton had never seen such an exhibition before, and a crowd turnedout--many more people than could possibly get into the place at once.There was music, and the skating was attractive. Visitors were allowedin the castle, but they were obliged to keep moving, having to walk downone side of the castle, and up the other, so as to give those behind achance to see everything.
The Corner House girls had thought the enchanted castle (for so itlooked to be from their windows at home) a very delightful object. Ruthand Agnes went up after supper on Saturday evening, with their skates.
Both of them were good skaters and Neale chose Aggie to skate with himin the carnival. Joe Eldred was glad to get Ruth. Carrie and Lucy Poolewere paired off with two of the big boys, and _they_ were nowhere nearas good skaters as Trix Severn.
Yet Trix was neglected. She had to go alone upon the ice, or skate withanother girl. There was a reason for this neglect that Trix could notappreciate. Boys do not like to escort a girl who is always "knocking"some other girl. The boys declared Trix Severn "carried her hammer"wherever she went and they steered clear of her when they wanted to havea good time.
Every time Agnes and Neale O'Neil passed Trix Severn upon the ice, shewas made almost ill with envy!