How they did hate to leave the white school yard when the bell would put an end to the short recesses!
"I think it's a pity we have to be shut up in the schoolhouse all the time and not get any good of it—when it doesn't snow here like this more than once till you're grownup," Mr. Newman heard one little fellow complain.
Their teacher had liked to play in the snow as well as any of them when he was a boy, and he wished that he had not been obliged to ring the school bell and spoil their fun so soon.
When it was time to dismiss school that day, Mr. Newman looked very solemn and said: "I think everyone of you boys deserves to be kept an hour more."
The thirty young faces that looked up into his grew very solemn, too.
Then their teacher smiled and said: "But instead of keeping you in, this time, I will keep you out. I give every boy in the room permission to stay one hour after school and play in the snow."
Thirty happy small boys went bounding out into the white school yard.
While they were building a snow fort and storming it with cannon-balls of snow, their teacher wrote their "excuses"—one to be carried by each boy when he went home from school an hour late.
When the joyous hour was over, Mr. Newman rang the bell and the boys came up to the schoolhouse and were given their excuses. They thought it very funny to be kept "out" an hour after school, instead of being kept "in," and to carry an excuse home instead of to school.