They were well wrapped up, and they had on high rubbers, so they were not badly off except for being lost.  That was not any fun, of course.

“Do you know where we are?” asked Freddie of his sister.

“No,” she answered, “I don’t.  It doesn’t look as if we were on any street at all.  Look at the tall grass all around us.”

Standing up through the snow was the tall meadow grass that had not been cut.  Freddie looked at it.

“Oh, now I know where we are!” he cried.  “We’re down on the meadows.  Bert brought me here once when he was looking for muskrats.  He didn’t get any, but I remember how tall the grass grew.  Now I know where we are.”

“All right, then you can take me home,” Flossie said.  “We’re not lost if you know where we are.”

“But I don’t know which way our house is,” Freddie went on, “and I can’t see to tell with all these flakes coming down.  I’ll have to wait until it stops.”

“S’posin’ it doesn’t stop all night?” asked Flossie.

“Oh, I guess it will,” said Freddie.  “Anyhow, we know where we are.  Let’s walk on and maybe we’ll get off the meadows and on to a street that leads to our house.”

Flossie was glad to walk, as it was warmer than when standing still; and so she and Freddie went on.  They did not know where they were going, and, as they found out afterward, they went farther and farther from their home and the city with every step.

“Oh, look!” suddenly cried Flossie.

“What is it?” asked her brother, stumbling over a little pile of snow as he hurried up beside his sister, who had gone on ahead of him.  “Did you find the right path, Flossie?  But then I don’t believe you did.  I don’t believe anybody, not even Santa Claus himself, could find a path in this snow storm.”

“Yes he could,” insisted Flossie.  “Santa Claus can do anything.  He could come right down out of the sky now, in his reindeer sleigh, and take us home, if he wanted to.”

“Well, then,” said Freddie, shaking his head as a snowflake blew into his ear and melted there with a ticklish feeling, “I just wish he would come and take us home.  I’m—­I’m getting tired, Flossie.”

“So’m I. But I did see something, Freddie,” and the little girl pointed ahead through the drifting flakes.  “It wasn’t the path, though.”

“What’d you see?” demanded Freddie, rubbing his eyes so he could see more clearly.

“That!” and Flossie pointed to a rounded mound of snow about half as high as her head.  It was right in front of her and Freddie.

“Oh, it’s a little snow house!” cried Freddie.

“That’s what I thought it was,” Flossie went on.  “Some one must have been playing out here on the meadows, and made this little house.  It’s awful small, but maybe if we curl up and stick our legs under us, we can get inside out of the storm.”

“Maybe we can!” cried Freddie.  “Let’s try.”