THE SNOW MAN
Sounding his funny, bleating cry, like a sheep, Nicknack gave a jump straight for the ice window in which he had seen himself as in a looking glass.
"Crash!" went the ice window.
"Oh, my!" screamed Lola, inside the snow house.
"What is it?" asked Jan, for Lola stood in front of her.
Trouble looked up from where he was sitting beside Tom on the snow bench, and just then the goat went right through the soft, snow side of the house and scrambled down inside.
"Dat's our goat!" exclaimed Trouble, as if that was the way Nicknack always came in. "Dat's our goat!"
For a moment Jan and Lola had been so frightened that they did not know what it was. Luckily they were not in Nicknack's way when he jumped through, so he did not land on them.
But the snow house was so small that there was hardly room for a big goat inside it, besides the four children, even with Ted outside, and Nicknack almost landed in the laps of Tom and Trouble when he jumped through. In fact, his chin-whiskers were in Trouble's face, and Baby William laughed and began pulling them as he very often did.
"Baa-a-a-a!" bleated the goat and then he quickly turned around to see, I suppose, what had become of the other goat against which he had leaped, intending to butt him out of the way.
"Oh, Nicknack!" cried Jan. "What made you jump in on us like that?"
"Oh, my, I'm so scared!" gasped Lola. "Will he bite us?"
"Nicknack never bites," answered Janet reprovingly. "But what made him jump into the snow house and break the ice window?"
"'Cause he saw himself in it," answered Ted, coming in just then. "I knew what he was goin' to do but I couldn't stop him. Say, Tom, he made an awful big jump!"
"I should say he did!" exclaimed Tom. "I thought the whole place was coming down! You'd better call your goat out, Curlytop, or he may knock our snow house all to pieces."
"All right, I will," agreed Ted. "Here, Nicknack!" he called. "Come on outside!"
Nicknack turned at the sound of his little master's voice, and just then he saw another ice window. The sun was shining on that, too, and once more Nicknack noticed the reflection of himself in the bright ice, which was like glass.
"Baa-a-a-a-a!" he bleated again. "Baa-a-a-a!"
"Look out! He's going to jump!" cried Tom.
He made a grab for the goat, but only managed to get hold of his short, stubby tail. To this Tom held as tightly as he could, but Nicknack was not going to be stopped for a little thing like that.
Forward he jumped, but he did not quite reach the ice window. Instead his horns and head butted against the side wall of the snow house, and in it he made a great hole, near the window.
This made the wall so weak that the snow house began to cave in, for the other wall had almost all been knocked down when the goat jumped through that.
"Look out!" cried Ted. "It's going to fall!"
"Come on!" yelled Tom, letting go of Nicknack's tail.
"Take care of Trouble!" begged Jan of her brother.
Ted caught his little brother up in his arms. It was as much as he could do, but, somehow or other, Ted felt very strong just then. He was afraid Trouble would be hurt.
And then, just as the children hurried out of the door, pulling away, in their haste, the blanket that was over the opening, the snow house toppled down, some of the boards in the roof breaking.
"Oh, it's a good thing we weren't in there when it fell!" cried Lola. "We'd all have been killed!"
"Snow won't kill you!" said her brother.
"But the boards might have hurt us," said Lola. "Our nice house is all spoiled!"
"And Nicknack is under the snow in there!" cried Ted.
"No, he isn't! Here he comes out," answered Janet. And just as she said that, out from under the pile of boards and the snow that was scattered over them, came Nicknack. With a wiggle of his head and horns, and a scramble of his feet, which did not have any rubber on now, Nicknack managed to get out from under the fallen playhouse, and with a leap he stood beside the children.
"There, Nicknack! See what you did!" cried Janet.
"Spoiled our nice snow house!" added Lola.
"We'll build you another," promised Ted. "Say, I never knew our goat was such a good jumper."
"He's strong all right," agreed Tom.
"Nicknack a funny goat!" laughed Trouble, as his brother set him down on a smooth place in the snow.
"I guess Trouble thinks it was all just for fun," said Tom. "He isn't scared a bit."
"Oh, Trouble doesn't get scared very easy," answered Jan. "He's always laughing. Aren't you, Trouble?" and she hugged him.
"Well, shall we build the house over again?" asked Tom, when Ted had taken the goat back to the stable and fastened him in so he could not easily get loose.
"It'll be a lot of work," said Lola. "You'll have to make a whole new one."
"Yes, Nicknack didn't leave much of it," agreed Tom. "Shall we make a bigger one, Ted—big enough for Nicknack to get in without breaking the walls?"
"Oh, I don't know," returned Ted slowly. "There isn't much snow left, and some of the boards are busted. Let's make a snow man instead."
"All right!" agreed Tom. "We'll do that! We'll make a big one."
"I don't want to do that," said Jan. "Come on, Lola, let's go coasting."
"An' take me!" begged Trouble.
"Yes, take him," added Ted. "He'll throw snowballs at the snow men we make if you don't."
So Baby William was led away by the two girls, and Tom and his chum started to make a snow man. But they soon found that the snow was not right for packing. It was too hard and not wet enough.
"It's too cold, I guess," observed Tom, when he had tried several times to roll a big ball as the start in making a snow man.
"Then let's us go coasting, too," proposed Ted, and Tom was willing.
So the boys, leaving the ruins of the snow house, and not even starting to make the snow man, went to coast with the girls, who were having a good time on the hill with many of their friends.
"Oh, it's snowing again!" cried Ted when the time came to go home, as it was getting dusk.
"We've had a lot of storms already this winter," added Lola.
"My grandpa wrote in a letter that a hermit, up near Cherry Farm, said this was going to be a bad winter for storms," put in Jan. "Maybe we'll all be snowed in."
"That'll be great!" cried Tom.
"It will not!" exclaimed his sister. "We might all freeze to death. I don't like too much snow."
"I do!" declared Ted. "And there's a lot coming down now!"
There seemed to be, for the white flakes made a cloud as they blew here and there on the north wind, and it was quite cold when the Curlytops and their friends reached their homes.
All the next day it snowed, and Ted and Jan asked their father and mother several times whether or not they were going to be snowed in.
"Oh, I guess not this time," answered Mr. Martin. "It takes a regular blizzard to do that, and we don't often get blizzards here."
Though they felt that possibly being snowed in might not be altogether nice, still Ted and Jan rather wanted it to happen so they could see what it was like. But that was not to come with this storm.
Still the wind and snow were so bad, at times, that Mrs. Martin thought it best for the Curlytops to stay in the house. Trouble, of course, had to stay in also, and he did not like that a bit. Neither did Jan or Ted, but there was no help for it.
"What can we do to have some fun?" asked Teddy, for perhaps the tenth time that day. He stood with his nose pressed flat against the window, looking out at the swirling flakes. "Can't I be out, Mother?" he asked again.
"Oh, no, indeed, little Curlytop son," she answered.
"But we want some fun!" chimed in Jan. "Isn't there anything we can do?"
"Have you played with all your games?" asked her mother.
"Every one," answered the little girl.
"And we even played some of 'em backwards, so's to make 'em seem different," put in Teddy.
"Well, if you had to do that it must be pretty hard!" laughed Mrs. Martin. "I know it isn't any fun to stay in the house, but to-morrow the storm may be over and then you can go out. I know that won't help matters now," she went on, as she saw that Teddy was about to say something. "But if you'll let me think a minute maybe I can plan out some new games for you to play."
"Oh, Mother, if you only can!" cried Jan eagerly.
"Don't talk—let her think!" ordered Teddy. "We want to have some fun—a lot of fun!"
So he and his sister sat very quietly while his mother thought of all the things that might be possible for a little boy and girl and their baby brother to do when they had to stay in the house.
"I have it!" cried Mrs. Martin at last.
"Something for us to play?" asked Janet.
"Yes. How would you like to play steamboat and travel to different countries?"
"Not real?" cried Ted, with a look at the snow outside.
"Oh, no, not real, of course," said his mother, with a smile. "But you can go up in the attic, and take the old easy chair that isn't any good for sitting in any more. You can turn that over on the floor and make believe it's a steamboat. In that you and Jan and Baby William can pretend to travel to different countries. You can say the floor is the ocean and you can take some blocks of wood to make the islands, and if any one steps in the make-believe water he'll get his feet wet."
"Make-believe wet," laughed Teddy.
"That's it," his mother agreed with a laugh. "Now run along up and play, and then you won't think about the snow and the storm. And before you know it—why, it will be night and time to go to bed and in the morning the storm may be over and you can be out."
"Come on!" cried Jan to her brother.
"Wait a minute," he said, standing still in the middle of the room, while Trouble, who seemed to know that something was going on different from usual, jumped up and down, crying:
"We hab some fun! We hab some fun!"
"But you mustn't jump like that up in the attic," said his mother, shaking her finger at him. "If you do you'll rattle the boards and maybe make the plaster fall."
"Do you mean the plaster like the kind I had on when I was sick?" asked Jan.
"No, my dear, I mean the plaster on the ceiling," said her mother. "Well, Teddy, why don't you go along and play the game I told you about?" she asked, as she saw the little boy still standing in the middle of the sitting-room. "Play the steamboat game with the old chair. The chair will be the ship, and you can take the old spinning wheel to steer with, and maybe there's a piece of stovepipe up there that you can use for a smokestack. Only, for mercy's sake, don't get all black, and don't let Trouble get black."
"Come on, Ted!" cried his sister to him.
"I was just thinkin'," he said thoughtfully. "Say, Mother, don't folks get hungry when they're on a ship?"
"I guess so, Ted."
"And even on a make-believe one?"
"Well, yes, I suppose they do. But you can make believe eat if you get make-believe hungry."
"But what if we get really hungry?" asked Teddy. "I'm that way now, almost. Couldn't we have something real to eat on the make-believe steamboat, Mother?"
Mrs. Martin laughed.
"Why, yes, I suppose you could," she answered. "You children go on up to the attic and get the old chair ready to play steamboat, and I'll see what I can find to bring up to you to eat."
"Now we can have some fun!" cried Ted, and he no longer looked out of the window at the snow, and wished he could be in it playing, even though that was not exactly good for him.
Up the stairs trooped the Curlytops, followed by Trouble, who grunted and puffed as he made his way, holding to the hem of Jan's dress.
"What's the matter, Trouble?" asked Jan, turning around.
"Maybe he's making believe he's climbing a mountain," said Ted. "You always have to breathe hard when you do that."
"Did you ever climb a mountain?"
"No, but I ran up a hill once," answered her brother, "and that made my breath come as fast as anything. I guess that's what Trouble is doing."
"No, I is not!" exclaimed the little boy, who heard what his sister and brother were saying about him. "I 'ist is swimmin', like I did at Cherry Farm," he said. "I play I is in the water."
"I guess he's ready to play steamboat, all right," laughed Jan. "Come along, little fat Trouble!" she called, and she helped him get up the last of the steps that led to the attic.
The children found an old easy chair. It was one Mr. Martin had made some years before, and was a folding one. It had a large frame, and could be made higher and lower by putting a cross bar of wood in some niches. The seat of the chair was made of a strip of carpet, but this had, long ago, worn to rags and the chair had been put in the attic until some one should find time to mend it. But this time never seemed to come.
Often, before, Ted, Jan and Trouble had played steamboat with it. They laid it down flat, and then raised up the front legs and the frame part that fitted into the back legs. These two parts they tied together and could move it back and forth, while they made believe the carpet part of the chair was the deck of the boat.
"All aboard!" called Janet, as Teddy laid the chair down on the floor.
"Wait a minute!" called her brother.
"What for?" Janet wanted to know.
"'Cause I haven't got the steerin' wheel fixed. I got to get that, else the boat will go the wrong way. Wait until I get the old spinning wheel for a steerer."
Up in the attic, among many other things, was an old spinning wheel, that used to belong to Mrs. Martin's mother's mother—that is the great-grandmother of the Curlytops. The spinning part of the wheel had been broken long before, but the wheel itself would go around and it would make something to steer with, just as on the real large steamers, Ted thought.
The spinning wheel was put in front of the chair steamboat, and then Jan got on "board," as it is called.
"Wait for me!" cried Trouble, who was hunting in a corner of the attic for something with which to have some fun.
"Oh, I won't forget you," laughed Jan, and then all three of the children were ready for the trip across the make-believe ocean.
They crowded together on the carpet deck of the chair boat while Ted twirled the wheel and Jan moved the legs back and forth as if they were the engine. Trouble cried "Toot! Toot!" he being the whistle, and they rode about—at least they pretended they did—and had lots of fun, stopping at wooden islands to pick cocoanuts and oranges from make-believe trees.
"Here comes mother with something real to eat!" cried Teddy, after a bit, and up to the attic did come Mrs. Martin with some molasses cookies. The children had lots of fun eating these and playing, and before they knew it, night had come, bringing supper and bedtime.
Toward evening of the second day it stopped snowing, and the next day was quite warm, so that when Ted and Jan went out to play a bit in the snow before going to school, Ted found that the white flakes would make fine snowballs.
"Oh, it packs dandy!" he cried. "We can make the snow man this afternoon!" and he threw a snowball at Nicknack's stable, hitting the side of it with a bang.
"Yes, this will make a good snow man," said Tom after school, when he and Ted tried rolling the large balls. "We'll make a regular giant!"
And they started at it, first rolling a big ball which was to be the body of the snow man.