E IN THE SUNNY SOUTH

CHAPTER I

THE SNOW MAN

"Oh, Bunny! what you making such a big nose for?"

"So I can hit it easier, Sue, when I peg snowballs at it."

Bunny Brown and his sister Sue were in the backyard of their home,
making a big man of snow. There had been quite a storm the day before,
and many white flakes had fallen. As soon as the storm stopped and the
weather grew warm enough, Mrs. Brown let Bunny and Sue go out to play.
And of course one of the first things they did, after running about in
the clean white snow, making "tracks," was to start a snow man.

Bunny was working away at the face of the white chap when Sue asked him
about the big nose he was making.

"What'd you say you were going to do, Bunny?" asked Sue, who was digging
away in the snow about where the man's legs would be when he was
finished.

"I said--" replied her brother, as he pressed some snow in his
red-mittened hand, getting ready to plaster it on the man's funny
face--"I said I was making his nose big so I could hit it easier with a
snowball."

"Oh, Bunny!" cried Sue, "are you going to throw snowballs at our nice
snow man?"

"Of course!" replied Bunny. "That's what we're making him for! I'm going
to put a hat on him, too. Course a hat's easier to hit than a nose,
'specially a tall hat like the one I'm going to make. You can throw at
the hat if you want to and I'll throw at the nose."

"Oh, Bunny!" exclaimed Sue, and from her voice you might have thought
Bunny had said he was going to throw a snowball at Wango, the pet monkey
of Mr. Jed Winkler, an animal of which Bunny Brown and his sister Sue
were very fond. "Bunny, don't hurt him!"

"Pooh! You don't s'pose a snow man can feel, do you?" asked Bunny,
turning to look at his sister. He had just begun to understand why it
was that Sue did not want him to throw snowballs at the big white fellow
when he was finished.

"Well, maybe he can't feel," said Sue, for she was really too old to
have such a little child's belief. At least she felt she was too old to
confess to such a feeling. "But what's the fun of making a nice snow man
and then hitting him all over with snowballs? I'm not going to throw at
his tall hat, even if you make one. Why can't you throw balls at
something else, Bunny, like a tree or a telegraph pole?"

"'Cause I can peg at them any time," Bunny answered, with a laugh. "It's
more fun to throw snowballs at a snow man and make believe he's real. He
can