“It sure does,” rejoined the boy from the South. “Of course I have books to read that help to pass away the time, but that isn’t like being with the fellows. Not that I’ve read very much this afternoon,” he went on, “because I’ve been too busy looking at the snow. Do you know that this is the first real snow storm I have ever seen?”
“Is that so?” queried Fred in astonishment. “We see so much of it every year that it gets to be an old story with us.”
“You’ve got an awful lot of fun coming to you,” put in Sparrow. “There’s skating and ice sailing and coasting and snowballing and lots of things.”
“Not forgetting muskratting and fishing through the ice,” added Fred. “Maybe we didn’t have a lot of fun the winter we spent up in Snowtop Camp, eh, fellows?”
“You bet we did,” agreed Sparrow, and launched into a long description of that memorable winter holiday in the Big Woods, not forgetting the bear and the wildcat and the snowslide that buried the house, and other adventures, to all of which Lee Cartier listened with the most rapt attention and interest.
“It must have been great,” he murmured with a sigh of envy. “I can see that I’ve got a lot of fun waiting for me as soon as I can get outdoors again. And I hope it won’t be long till then. The doctor said to-day that I could probably be outdoors in a week.”
“That’s bully,” said Bobby. “But do you really mean, Lee, that you’ve never seen snow before?”
“Oh, I’ve seen little flurries of it once or twice,” replied Lee, “but it’s never amounted to anything, and it’s melted just as soon as it struck the ground. Down in Louisiana, where I come from, it’s practically summer all the year round. While it’s been snowing here to-day, people have been going in swimming down there. The darkeys are going round barefooted, women are fanning themselves, and men are going round on the shady side of the street.”
“Nobody getting sunstruck, is there?” queried Fred with a grin.
“Well, perhaps not as bad as that,” smiled Lee, “but take it altogether it’s almost as different there from what it is here as day is from night.”