procession.

It must have been snowing ever since supper time, for the lower step was
already covered, and the air was thick with great, fleecy flakes, which
piled drifts rapidly about every object in the Corner House back yard.

A prolonged "Oh!" came from every one. The girls could not see the
street fence. The end of the woodshed was the limit of their vision down
the long yard. Two or three fruit trees loomed like drooping ghosts in
the storm.

"Wonderful! wonderful!" cried Ruth.

"No school to-morrow," Agnes declared.

"Well, I shall be glad, for one thing," said the worried Tess. "I won't
have to bother about that old composition until another day."

Agnes was closely investigating the condition of the snow. "See!" she
said, "it packs beautifully. Let's make a snowman."

"Goody-good!" squealed Dot. "That'll be _fun_!"

"I--don't--know," said Ruth, slowly. "It's late now----"

"But there'll be no school, Ruthie," Tess teased.

"Come on!" said Neale. "We can make a dandy."

"Well! Let us put on our warm things--and tell Mrs. MacCall," Ruth said,
willing to be persuaded to get out into the white drifts.

When the girls came out, wrapped to the eyes, Neale already had several
huge snowballs rolled. They got right to work with him, and soon their
shrill laughter and jolly badinage assured all the neighborhood that the
Corner House girls were out for a good time.

Yet the heavily falling snow seemed to cut them off like a wall from
every other habitation. They could not even see the Creamers'
cottage--and that was the nearest house.

It was great fun for the girls and their boy friend. They built a famous
snowman, with a bucket for a cap, lumps of coal for eyes and nose, and
stuck into its mouth an old long-stemmed clay pipe belonging to Uncle
Rufus.

He was a jaunty looking snowman for a little while; but although he was
so tall that the top of his hat was level with the peak of the woodshed
roof, before the Corner House girls went to bed he stood more than knee
deep in the drifted snow.

Neale had to make the round of his furnaces. Fortunately they were all
in the neighborhood, but he had a stiff fight to get through the storm
to the cobbler's little cottage before midnight.

At that "witching hour," if any of the Corner House girls had been awake
and had looked out of the window, they would have seen that the snowman
was then buried to his waist!

When daylight should have appeared, snow was sti