thought he was, for right that second he said, "Psst, gang, quiet! I
think I saw something move over there--sh! Don't look now, or he'll--"

We all looked, of course, but didn't see anything, although I had a
funny feeling inside of me which was, "What if it's Mr. Black watching
us? What if all of a sudden he should come walking out from behind
those cedar trees and see the snow man we've made of him, and what if
he'd decide to use one or two of the switches on us?"--not a one of us
being sure he didn't like us well enough to do that to us.

Poetry spoke up then and said, "I say, it's not quite perfect. There's
one thing wrong with it, and I'm going to fix that right this very
minute." With that remark, he pulled off one of his red mittens,
shoved one of his fat hands inside his coat pocket, pulled something
out, and started to shuffle toward Mr. Black's snow statue. I could
hardly believe my eyes at what I saw, but there it was as plain as
day, a red, cloth-bound book with gold letters on it which said, _The
Hoosier Schoolmaster_. I knew right away it was the book he and I had
seen in his library one night and had read part of it, that part
especially where the tough gang of boys in the story had caused the
teacher a lot of trouble, and had locked him out of the schoolhouse;
and then the teacher, who had been very smart, had climbed up on top
of the school and put a flat board across the top of the chimney, and
the smoke which couldn't get out of the chimney had poured out of the
stove inside, and all the tough gang of boys had been smoked out....

"What are you going to do?" I said to Poetry, and he said, "Nothing,"
and right away was doing it, which was sticking two sticks in the snow
man's stomach side by side and then opening _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_
to the place where there was the picture of the teacher on the roof,
and laying the book flat open across the two sticks.

"There you are, Sir," Poetry said, talking to the snow man. "The
Hoosier Schoolmaster himself." Then Poetry made a bow as low as he
could, he being so fat he grunted every time he stooped over very far.

Well, it was funny, and most of us laughed, Circus scooped up a
snowball and started to throw it at it, but we all stopped him on
account of not wanting to have all our hard work spoiled in a few
minutes. Besides, Poetry all of a sudden, wanted to take a picture of
it, and his camera was at his house which was away down past the
sycamore tree