“Well, you see, Sunny Boy, if the snow wasn’t carried away, the baker’s horse might not be able to bring us any rolls for breakfast and perhaps the milkman couldn’t bring us any milk,” Mr. Horton answered. “And the people who are cold would not be able to get any coal for their fires. The boys and girls might go coasting, but the horses and wagons and motor trucks would find it hard going. It is much wiser to carry the snow away as fast as it falls. I think it is taken out into the country and there emptied on waste land.”
“I wonder if Mr. Parkney likes it to snow,” said Sunny Boy, who always thought of the Parkney family when any one mentioned the country. “When can we go see him, Daddy?”
“By and by, when spring comes, if not before,” said Mr. Horton pleasantly. “Now, Son, here we are at Miss May’s. If it doesn’t stop snowing pretty soon I shall telephone Mother to have Harriet come for you this noon.”
Sunny Boy kissed Daddy and ran up the steps. Miss May opened the door for him.
“Well, Sunny Boy, you are not afraid of the weather, are you?” she said brightly. “I’m sure some of the children will not be able to come to-day. The trolley cars have stopped, Miss Davis tells me, and Lottie Carr and her sister live in the suburbs, you know.”
When the nine o’clock bell rang all the children in Miss Davis’ room were there, except the two Carr girls. They could not come because there were no trolley cars running and they lived too far away to walk. There were three or four little girls in Miss May’s room who stayed at home, too, but nearly every one came. The children thought it great fun to scramble through the snow, and then, when they reached Miss May’s, to have Maria stand them on a mat of linoleum and brush them off with a whisk broom so that they should not carry snow into the school rooms.
Miss Davis’ class was having a reading lesson just after recess, when Miss May came in to speak to Miss Davis. The two teachers went over by the window to talk and the children could not hear what they said. Miss May went back to her own room in a few moments and then, to every one’s surprise, instead of telling Sunny Boy to finish the story he had been reading to her, Miss Davis asked her class to close their books.
“Miss May is going to send you home earlier than usual to-day,” she told them when the books were closed and the boys and girls were sitting “at attention,” as she liked to have them. “She thinks the storm is getting worse, and, of course, the longer you stay the more snow you will have to plough through. I will help you put on your wraps, and then I want you to hurry home. Don’t stop to play in the snow and don’t build snow men or throw snowballs. Go straight home, because your mothers may begin to worry about you.”
They went into the cloakroom to get their wraps, and Miss Davis had to turn on the light for them because it was so dark. The window was high in the wall, and the wind had blown so much snow against it that the room was “like five o’clock at night,” Carleton Marsh said.