“For we must make them as hard as we can,” said Polly, earnestly. “Then no one will be able to guess them and we’ll have heaps of money to take to school for the collection.”
But, of course, they couldn’t think of riddles every hour in the day, no matter how interested they were in the coming meeting. There was, as Artie observed, “a good deal of weather going on,” and it alternately rained and snowed for three days. This added to the beauty of the snowman, for he grew a little icicle beard, and he wore earrings, too, formed of the melted and frozen snow.
“I think we ought to break those off,” said Ward, much scandalized. “I never saw a man wear earrings.”
“Don’t touch that snowman,” ordered Fred. “If he wants to wear earrings, let him! Every one says he is the biggest snow statue we ever had in River Bend, and we’re not going to spoil him picking on him.”
The pictures Harry Worden had taken turned out beautifully, and he had had an enlargement made for the Riddle Club clubroom. Mrs. Marley cleverly framed it in an old frame that fitted exactly, and the snowman hung on the wall of the pretty clubroom and was much admired.
Though Fred had searched diligently for his bank and never ceased to mourn it, he could not find it, nor even a trace of where it might have been. Jess sympathized with him deeply—as indeed they all did, for Fred had been so very proud of the money saved.
“I’d give anything, if I could find that bank,” said Fred, twenty times a day. “I don’t see what I could have done with it. And why can’t I remember where I put it down or where I had it last?”
“I don’t know,” Jess would sigh. “I don’t see, myself, how you could lose a whole bank. But then, I lost my lovely glove, and the one that’s left isn’t a bit of good. And they cost six dollars—they were real brushed wool. Oh, dear, it’s awful to lose things, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t care if I’d lost a glove,” said Fred. “I wouldn’t mind losing anything of mine, even my new stickpin Aunt Katherine sent me. Because that would be mine and it wouldn’t affect any one else. But here I’ve gone and lost all the money that belongs to the Riddle Club! I’m saving my allowance, but it will be a million years before I get enough saved to make up for what I lost. What’s a glove, compared to a bank?”
Along about this time of year school began to be what Jess called “exciting.” The classes stayed after school several afternoons to make decorations for the auditorium, where a Christmas party was always held. This year Polly had learned how to make pretty red flowers, and Miss Elliott, her teacher, suggested that if long wreaths were braided of crêpe paper strands and these flowers placed at intervals, the effect would be very pretty.