Nan was helping Flossie dress, and then she intended to hurry down to the kitchen to make coffee. Nan could get up a simple breakfast, her mother and Dinah having taught her this. But as Nan fastened Flossie’s buttons she heard Bert moving around in his room.
“Whoop-ee!” yelled the boy as he danced around his apartment. “Oh, look, Freddie! It’s snowing like anything! It’s a regular blizzard!”
“Oh, let me see!” begged the small Bobbsey lad.
“Don’t run around barefooted!” warned Nan from her room. “I don’t want you catching cold, Freddie, for then I’ll have some one else sick to nurse.”
“Oh, is Flossie sick?” called Bert who, having looked from the window to see that it was snowing hard, had now begun to dress. “Is Flossie sick?” he called again.
“No. It’s Mrs. Pry,” Nan answered. “She has the lumbago in her back, and I’ll have to stay home from school and nurse her. You and Flossie and Freddie can go, Bert—that is, if the storm isn’t too bad. But you’ll have to hurry. We’re late!”
“Late! I should say we were late!” cried Bert as he looked at a clock on his bureau. “It’s after half past eight and——”
Just then, above the noise of the swirling snowflakes hitting against the windows and the sound of the howling, cold wind, another noise came to the ears of the Bobbsey twins.
A bell rang out in the distance. Five strokes were sounded, then a pause and five strokes more. Another pause, then another five strokes.
“It’s the storm signal on the school bell!” cried Bert. “The three fives! Hurray, no school to-day!”