“Now remember, don’t play, but hurry home,” said Miss Davis, when the last legging was buttoned and all the mittens were matched.  Perry Phelps lost one of his mittens regularly every day and Miss Davis always had to find it for him.  “Don’t stop to play in the snow till you have been home and had your lunch.  You’ll have the whole afternoon to play in.”

It was much colder than it had been in the morning.  Sunny Boy knew that as soon as he went out on the steps.  But he did not know how cold it was till he and the other children turned the first corner.  Then the wind struck them and Dorothy Peters cried that she couldn’t breathe!

“Turn your back to it,” Sunny Boy advised her, pulling his fur cap down over his ears.

But the wind seemed to blow in several directions at once.  It swooped down around the children and blew stinging snowflakes into their eyes.  It howled and shrieked and tore over the roofs of the houses, bringing great sheets of snow with it.

“It wasn’t like this, this morning,” complained Carleton, stamping his feet to warm them.

Though none of them knew it, the storm was now a blizzard and it was cold enough and windy enough and snowy enough to make grown-ups most uncomfortable, to say nothing of small boys and girls who had to walk through the storm.  It was a mistake for the teacher to send the children home alone.

“I can’t see where I’m going!” gasped Jimmie Butterworth, trying to wipe the snow from his face with his mittens.

Jessie Smiley stubbed her toe against something and began to cry.

“I’m so cold!” she wailed.  “My nose is frozen, I know it is.  And I never saw that funny fence before.”

Sunny Boy looked up at the great iron fence.  The snow had blown against it till it was almost covered.  There was a row of ash cans set out on the curb in front of this fence and they were so completely covered with snow that poor Jessie had walked into them without seeing them.

“No, I never saw that fence, either,” declared Jimmie.  “Is this the way you go home to your house, Sunny Boy?”

“I don’t know whose fence that is,” replied Sunny Boy.  “I never saw it before.  Gee, doesn’t the wind blow!”

The wind was blowing harder than ever and the snow seemed to be coming down faster and faster.  There was not a horse or wagon or motor truck to be seen on the street, and not even a single person.  Every one who could get in out of the storm had done so.  And as it was noon by this time even those whose work forced them to be out had managed to find shelter somewhere for the lunch hour.

“I want to go home!” cried Dorothy Peters, just as Ruth Baker had cried the day she went coasting with Sunny Boy and Nelson.  Sunny Boy decided that all girls acted the same way.

“Well, come on,” said Jimmie Butterworth, putting his hands deeper into his pockets.  “Come on, Dorothy; you won’t get home standing there and crying about it.  Hurry up.”