e and just as round as you can turn them out."

This was easy work. Before Billy could say, "Jack Robinson!" four
pairs of eager hands had accumulated snow-balls enough for a sham
battle. In the meantime, Billy had decorated the doorway with two
tall, round pillars. He added a pointed roof to the house and
trimmed it with snow-balls, all along the edge.

"Now I guess we'd better have a snow-man to live in this mansion
while we're about it," Billy suggested briskly. "Each of you roll up
an arm or a leg while I make the body."

Billy placed the legs in the corner opposite the snow-house. He
lifted on to them the big round body which he himself had rolled.
Putting the arms on was not so easy. He worked for a long time
before he found the angle at which they would stick.

Everybody took a hand at the head. Maida contributed some dulse for
the hair, slitting it into ribbons, which she stuck on with glue.
Rosie found a broken clothes-pin for the nose. The round, smooth
coals that Dicky discovered in the coal-hod made a pair of
expressive black eyes. Arthur cut two sets of teeth from orange peel
and inserted them in the gash that was the mouth. When the head was
set on the shoulders, Billy disappeared into the house for a moment.
He came back carrying a suit-case. "Shut your eyes, every manjack of
you," he ordered. "You're not to see what I do until it's done. If I
catch one of you peeking, I'll confine you in the snow-house for
five minutes."

The W.M.N.T.'s shut their eyes tight and held down the lids with
resolute fingers. But they kept their ears wide open. The mysterious
work on which Billy was engaged was accompanied by the most
tantalizing noises.

"Oh, Billy, can't I please look," Maida begged, jiggling up and
down. "I can't stand it much longer."

"In a minute," Billy said encouragingly. The mysterious noises kept
up. "Now," Billy said suddenly.

Four pairs of eyes leaped open. Four pairs of lips shrieked their
delight. Indeed, Maida and Rosie laughed so hard that they finally
rolled in the snow.

Billy had put an old coat on the snow-man's body. He had put a tall
hat--Arthur called it a "stove-pipe"--on the snow-man's head.
He had put an old black pipe between the snow-man's grinning,
orange-colored teeth. Gloves hung limply from the snow-man's arm-stumps
and to one of them a cane was fastened. Billy had managed to give the
snow-man's head a cock to one side. Altogether he looked so spruce
and jovial tha