CHAPTER XII
COASTING
Christmas morning was as white as the most picturesque imagination could desire. A heavy snow had fallen in the night and lay, sparkling, all over the fields and hills, so that now, in the sunshine, the whole earth seemed powdered with diamonds.
Patty came dancing downstairs, in a dainty little white morning frock.
“Merry Christmas, everybody!” she cried, as she found the group gathered round the fireplace in the hall. “Did you ever see such a beautiful day? Not for skating,” and she smiled at Hal, “but for snow-balling or coasting or any old kind of fun with snow.”
“All right,” cried Roger. “Who’s for a snow frolic? We can build a fort——”
“And make a snow-man,” put in Daisy, “with a pipe in his mouth and an old hat on his head. Why do snow-men always have to have those two things?”
“They don’t,” said Jim Kenerley. “That’s an exploded theory. Let’s make one this morning of a modern type, and let him have anything he wants except a pipe and a battered stove-pipe hat.”
“We’ll give him a cigarette and a Derby,” said Patty. “Oh, here comes the mail! Let’s have that before we go after our snow-man.”
The chauffeur came in from a trip to the post-office, with his hands and arms full of mail,—parcels, papers, and letters,—which he deposited on a table, and Jim Kenerley sorted them over.