The children walked around the pile of snow, looking for the hole, such as they always left when they built snow houses.

“The front door is closed,” said Freddie.  “I guess they shut it after them when they went away.”

“Maybe they’re inside now,” remarked Flossie.  “If we knocked maybe they would let us in.  Only it will be awful crowded,” and she sighed.  She was very cold and tired, and was worried about being lost.  It was no fun, and she would have been glad to go inside the little snow house, even though some one else were in it also.

“There’s no place to knock,” Freddie said, as he looked about on every side of the round pile of snow.  “And there’s no door-bell.  The next time I make a snow house, Flossie, I’m going to put a front door-bell on it.”

“That’ll be nice,” his sister said.  “But, Freddie, never mind about the door-bell now.  Let’s get inside.  I’m awful cold!”

“So’m I. And another snowflake just went into my ear.  It makes me wiggle when it melts and runs down inside.”

“I like to wiggle,” Flossie said.  “I’m going to open my ears real wide and maybe a snowflake will get in mine.  Does it feel funny?”

“Terribly funny.  But you can’t open your ears any wider than they are now, Flossie.  They’re wide open all the while—­not like your eyes that you can open and shut part way.”

“Maybe I can open my ears wider,” Flossie said.  “I’m going to try, anyhow.”

She stood still in the snow, wrinkling her forehead and making funny “snoots” as Freddie called them, trying to widen her ears.  But she gave it up finally.

“I guess I can’t get a snowflake to tickle me,” she said with a sigh.

“You can have the next one that goes into my ear,” offered Freddie.  “But they melt so soon and run down so fast that I don’t see how I am going to get them out.”

“Never mind,” said Flossie.  “I can get a snowflake in my ear when I get home.  Just now let’s see if we can’t get inside this little house.  If the door is frozen shut, maybe you can find a stick and poke it open.  Look for a stick, Freddie.”

“All right, I will,” and Freddie began kicking away at the snow around his feet, hoping to turn up a stick.  This he soon did.

“I’ve found one!” he cried.  “Now we can get in and away from the storm.  I’ll make a hole in the snow house!”

With the stick, which was a piece of flat board, Freddie began to toss and shovel aside the snow.  The top part came off easily enough, for the flakes were light and fluffy.  But underneath them there was a hard, frozen crust and this was not so easily broken and tossed aside.  But finally Freddie had made quite a hole, and then he and Flossie saw something queer.  For, instead of coming to the hollow inside of the snow house, the little boy and girl saw a mass of sticks, dried grass and dirt.  Over this was the snow, and it was piled up round, like the queer houses the Eskimos make in the Arctic regions.