“Get right out of my way, little boy,” answered Charlotte, with assumed scorn.  “I suppose now that vacation has begun you children will be under my feet all the time.”

Joe chuckled softly.  He would have been disappointed if Charlotte had answered in any other way.

“What’s the matter with you, Charlotte?” he asked as she passed him and he fell into line behind her.  “You look as though you had lost your last friend.”

“I feel so,” remarked Charlotte briefly, and in a flash was sorry she had said it.

“I didn’t think Ruth was that kind,” Joe said after a pause.

“What kind?  She isn’t.  There isn’t anything the matter, and it’s all my fault.  Ruth’s all right, and I don’t blame her a bit.”

Joe grinned appreciatively behind her back over this mixed statement of affairs.  Then he said, “Good for you, Charlotte.  You’re all right, too.  What are you going to do this morning?”

“Shovel snow.  It’s the only kind of work that I really enjoy.”

“Let me help.  I like to shovel snow when it isn’t in my own yard.”

“Run off and play with the other boys,” answered Charlotte ungratefully.  “I have the twins and Molly on my hands, and that will be enough for one day.”

“Don’t be foolish and refuse a good thing when it’s offered you,” said Joe good-naturedly.  “I’ll help you amuse them.”

“Well, come along in then, and read while I get the children ready.  Oh, they’re out now,” she added, as they turned the comer and saw the twins, looking like industrious brownies, rolling a huge snowball across the yard, while Molly was expending her artistic talent on the building of a snow-man.

The clean snow-drifts, glittering in the sunshine, fired Charlotte with the desire to play as she used to play when a child.  “Get the shovels, Joe,” she commanded, “and after we’ve cleared the piazza, let’s build a snow-house and freeze it.”

“And my man can be the man that owns it, out for a walk in his garden,” chimed in Molly, who had been too much absorbed in her work to speak before.

“Nice weather for gardening,” said Joe with a wink, as he started after the shovels.

Work is a cure for many sorrows, and Charlotte felt her heart grow lighter as she helped Joe cut great blocks of snow and pile them symmetrically.  Betty, who had wandered over to see Charlotte, proved a most efficient helper, and Frank and Bert, driving by almost hidden under the branches of a stately Christmas tree, shouted their greetings and came back later to join in the work.

Both boys and girls worked hard, and the result was a snow hut large enough to shelter a good-sized family of Esquimaux.  An arched doorway gave entrance to the interior, which was divided into two rooms.  It had taken a large amount of snow to build it, and really much skill, for the day was growing warmer and it was almost impossible to make the structure firm enough to stand.