246 THE LAND OF PLUCK

“Tt will be twice the fun to make a snow-man, Will,”
said his brother Sydney ; “ won't it, Charley ?”

Now, Charley had a way of saying “ Of course” that was
worth a bushel of arguments to a boy like Will; so when
he said “Of course,” and Hal added scornfully, “Who
wants a fort?” the thing was settled: a man it should be.

Nearly all day the boys worked. A strong clothes-pole
served as a backbone around which the figure was built
from the ground upward. None of them had ever made a
snow-man before, and to make a large, well-shaped one was
not a very easy task. Even with their determination to
have him well proportioned, he turned out, as Sydney con-
fessed, to be “rather short for his thickness”; and Will’s
plan of helping this trouble, by piling the snow on top
of the big white head, did n’t work well at all. Still he
would insist upon holding up great balls, and shouting:
“Help yourself, Syd,—pile up!”

And Sydney as resolutely shouted back :

“Don't want it. I tell you he’s got twice too much
forehead already.”

“Fudge!” Charley would say ; “take it, Syd,—imake it
into a hat.”

“A hat would n’t do any good,” Sydney would insist,
from the top of the barrel on which he was standing ; “ not
a bit of good; the man himself is out of proportion.
Don’t you understand? I’ve taken a heap from the top of
his noble brow already. Do you know I wish this chap
were marble instead of snow? I’ve been thinking, ever
since we began, I ’d like to make a statue in earnest.”

Meantime, Hal McDougal, shaping the arm, fell to think-