"There, now, that"s something like;" and Mrs. Farnham remarked in a tone of exultation,--
"You never saw any thing like that in the city, Susie."
"Never, aunt Sarah. It"s splendid. It"s the grandest snow-storm I ever heard of."
There was very little wind as yet, and the fluttering flakes lay still where they fell.
"All the snow that couldn"t get down before is coming now," said Pen.
"There"s ever so much of it. I like snow."
More and more of it; and the men and boys came in from the barns after supper as white as so many polar bears, to stamp and laugh and be brushed till the color of their clothes could be seen.
Then the wind began to rise, and the whole family felt like gathering closely around the fireplace; and the flames poured up the wide chimney as if they were ready to fight that storm.
The boys cracked nuts, and popped corn, and played checkers. The deacon read his newspaper. Mrs. Farnham and aunt Judith plied their knitting.
Susie showed Pen how to crochet a tidy. It was very cosey and comfortable; but all the while they could hear blast after blast, as they came howling around the house, and hurled the snow fiercely against the windows.
"Isn"t it grand?" said Port at last. "But we"ll have some shovelling to do in the morning."
"Guess we will!"
"And you"ll have a good time getting to school."
"School! If this keeps on all night, there won"t be any going to meeting to-morrow, let alone school on Monday."
It did keep on all night; and the blinding drifts were whirling before the wind with a gustier sweep than ever, when the farmhouse people peered out at them next morning.
Every shovel they could furnish a pair of hands for had to be at work good and early, and the task before them had a kind of impossible look about it.
The cattle and sheep and horses had all been carefully sheltered. Even the poultry had received special attention from their human protectors.
They were all sure to be found safe and warm, but the difficulty now was in finding them at all.
There was a drift nearly ten feet high between the house and the pigpen, and a worse one was piled up over the gate leading into the barnyard.
How those pigs did squeal, while they impatiently waited for the breakfast which was so very long in coming!
"They"re nearest, father," said Corry. "Hadn"t we better stop that noise, first thing we do?"
"You and Port go for them."
They dug away manfully at that drift, or, rather, at the hole they meant to make through it, while the grown-up shovellers toiled in the direction of the barnyard-gate.
"Corry," said Port, "don"t you think this is pretty hard work for Sunday morning?"
"Those pigs don"t know any thing about Sunday. The cows don"t either.
They get hungry, just the same."
"I s"pose it"s all right."
"Right! You trust father for that. He says the Lord made Sunday, and the Lord sent the snow, and we needn"t worry about it. The Lord wants all his cattle fed regularly."
"Did your father say that?"
"Yes, I heard him saying it to aunt Judith."
"It"s all right, then. But don"t you think it"s pretty hard work for any kind of day?"
"Yes, but it"s fun. Hear those pigs! They know we"re coming."
It sounded a great deal as if the hungry quadrupeds in the pen were explaining their condition to all the outside world, or trying to, and cared very little how much work it might cost to bring them their breakfast.
Their neighbors in the stables and barn made less fuss about the matter, but they had even longer to wait. Before the great drift at the gate could be conquered, it was breakfast-time for human beings, and there was never a morning when coffee and hot cakes seemed more perfectly appropriate.
While the human workers were busy at the breakfast-table, the snow and wind did not take any resting spell, but kept right on, doing their best to restore the damaged drifts.
"Susie," said Port, "doesn"t this make you think of Lapland?"
"Or Greenland, or Siberia?"
"Tell you what," said Corry, "I don"t believe the Russians get any thing much better than this."
"If they do," said aunt Judith, "I don"t want to live there. There won"t be any going to meeting to-day."
"Meeting!" exclaimed the deacon. "There"ll be a dozen big drifts between this and the village. All hands"ll have to turn out to breaking roads, soon as the storm lets up."
No end of it was reached that day; but the barn was reached, and all the quadrupeds and bipeds were found, safe and hungry, and were carefully attended to.
"We sha"n"t get into the woods again right away," said Corry; and he was right about that, but there was a thoughtful look on Susie"s face as she remarked,--
"I wonder how Mrs. Stebbins is getting along. There"s n.o.body there but Vosh."
"He"s a worker," said the deacon. "He"s very strong for his age,--likeliest youngster in the whole valley. We can"t get over there to-day, but we will to-morrow."
That had indeed been a busy time for Vosh, hard and late as he had worked the night before; and his mother came out to help him.
"It ain"t no time to talk, Lavawjer," she said to him; "but I do wish I knowed how the deacon"s folks was a-gettin" on. They must be pretty nigh snowed under."
"Guess they"re all right, but it"ll give Susie and Port some notion of what snow can do in the country."
Away on into the night the great northern gusts worked steadily; but towards morning it seemed as if the storm decided that it had done enough, and it began to subside. Now and then it again took hold as if it had still a drift or so to finish; but by sunrise every thing was still and calm and wonderfully white.
"This"ll be a working-day, I guess," said the deacon; "but all the paths we make"ll stay made."
There was some comfort in that; for all they had made on Sunday had to be shovelled out again, and the pigs were as noisy as ever.
The deacon insisted on digging out every gate so it would swing wide open; and all the paths were made wide and clear, walled high on either side with tremendous banks of snow. It was after dinner, and the workers were getting a little weary of it, before they could open the front-gate.
Susie was watching them from the windows, and Pen was in the front-yard, vigorously punching a snow-bank with a small shovel, when aunt Judith suddenly exclaimed right over Susie"s shoulder,--