that Meg could hardly see him.

"Bobby! where are you?" she cried.

"Right here, don't step on me," giggled Bobby, scrambling to his feet
and making sure the eggs were unharmed. "That dark thing over there
must be the bank. Gee, doesn't that sound like Philip?"

A dog on the low bank had barked, and indeed it did sound like Philip.

"Why it is!" called Meg in delight, when they reached the edge of the
pond and began to climb up. "You dear, old Philip! Were you looking
for us?"

Philip wagged his stumpy tail and frisked about, trying his best to
tell the children that he had come out to look for them. Having Philip
with them to talk to and pet made the rest of the way home seem
shorter, and in less than fifteen minutes Meg and Bobby were shaking
the snow off their clothes in the Blossom front hall.

"Your mother has worried ever since the first snow flake," said Father
Blossom, helping Meg shake snow from her wet hair. "Sam and I should
have been out with a lantern if you had been much longer."

"We're starving," declared Bobby, handing over the eggs which he had
remembered to carry carefully all the time. "Isn't supper ready?"

Supper was ready and Meg and Bobby were so hungry that Father Blossom
pretended to be alarmed for fear there wasn't enough food in the house.
He said he was afraid Norah would come in and say there was no more
bread and that all the butter and baked potatoes were gone, and then
what would they do?

"Oh, I think they're only a little hungrier than usual," Aunt Polly
said, smiling.

Being lost in a snow storm didn't make either Bobby or Meg dislike the
snow and the first thing they thought of the next morning was the
weather.

"I hope it snowed all night," said Meg cheerfully. "I would like to
see snow up to the second-story windows, wouldn't you, Bobby?"

Bobby thought that would be fun, too, but when he mentioned it at the
breakfast table, no one seemed to like the idea.

"Just about as much snow as I care for, right now," declared Father
Blossom. "Our trucks are having trouble breaking the roads and this
fresh fall is discouraging for people who want to work. I've a good
mind to get out the old box sleigh and hire a horse and let Sam drive
to Fernwood for that freight consignment," he said to Mother Blossom.

But Meg's quick little brain understood at once.

"Daddy!" she cried, the loveliest rose color coming into her cheeks.
"Darling Daddy, can't we go in the box sl