Six Little Bunkers at Mammy Junes | Page 5

for excitement and adventure, Margy and Mun Bun had returned to the great window that overlooked the street and the front steps. They flattened their noses against the cold pane and stared down into the driving snow. Within this short time, since the storm had begun, everything was white and the few people passing in the street were like snowmen, for the white flakes stuck to their coats and other wraps.
"Oh, see that man!" Margy cried to Mun Bun. "He almost fell down."
"He's not a man," said her little brother with confidence. "He's a boy."
"Oh! He's a black boy--a colored boy. That's right, so he is."
The figure in the snow stumbled along the sidewalk, clinging to the iron railings. When he reached the steps of Aunt Jo's house he slipped down upon the second step and seemed unable to get up again. His body sagged against the iron railing post, and soon the snow began to heap on him and about him.
"Oh!" gasped Margy. "He is a reg'lar snowman."
"He's a black snowman," said Mun Bun. "It must be freezing cold out there, Margy."
"Of course it is. He'll turn into a nicicle if he stays there on the steps," declared the little girl, with some anxiety.
"And he hasn't a coat and scarf like you and me," Mun Bun said. "Maybe he hasn't any Grandma Bell to knit scarfs for him."
"I believe we ought to help him, Mun Bun," said Margy, decidedly. "We have plenty of coats."
"And scarfs," agreed Mun Bun. "Let's."
So they immediately left the room quite unnoticed by the older people in it. This is a remarkable fact. Whenever Margy and Mun Bun had mischief in mind they never asked Mother about it. Now, why was that, do you suppose?
The two little ones went swiftly downstairs into the front hall. Both had coats and caps and scarfs hung on pegs in a little dressing-room near the big door. They knew that they should not touch the outer garments belonging to the older children; but they got their own wraps.
"Maybe he's too big for them," murmured Margy. "But I guess he can squeeze into the coats--into one of them, anyway."
"Course he can," said Mun Bun. "Mine's a nawful warm coat. And that black snowman isn't much bigger than I am, Margy."
"I don't know," said his sister slowly, for she was a little wiser than Mun Bun about most things. "Open the door."
Mun Bun could do that. This was the inside door, and they stepped into the vestibule. Pressing his face close to the glass of one of the outer doors, Mun Bun stared down at the "black snowman" on the step.
"He's going to sleep in the snow," said the little boy. "I guess we've got to wake him up, Margy."
He pounded on the glass with his fat fist. He knocked several times before the figure below even moved. Then the colored boy, who was not more than seventeen or eighteen, turned his head and looked up over his shoulder at the faces of the two children in the vestibule.
He was covered with snow. His face, though moderately black as a usual thing, was now gray with the cold. His black eyes, even, seemed faded. He was scantily clad, and his whole body was trembling with the cold.
"Come up here!" cried Mun Bun, beckoning to the strange boy. "Come up here!"
The boy in the snow seemed scarcely to understand. Or else he was so cold and exhausted that he could not immediately get up from the step on which he was sitting.
CHAPTER III
UNCLE SAM'S NEPHEW
The fluffy, sticky snowflakes gathered very fast upon the colored boy's clothing. As Mun Bun had first announced, he looked like a snowman, only his face was grayish-black.
He was slim, and when he finally stood up at the bottom of the house steps, he seemed to waver just like a slim reed in the fierce wind that drove the snowflakes against him. He hesitated, too. It seemed that he scarcely knew whether it was best to mount the steps to Aunt Jo's front door or not.
"Come up here!" cried Mun Bun again, and continued to beckon to him through the glass of the outer door.
Margy held up her coat and cap, and beckoned to the boy also. He looked much puzzled as he slowly climbed the steps. His lips moved and the children knew he asked:
"What yo' want of me, child'en?"
Mun Bun tugged at the outer door eagerly, and finally it flew open. He shouted in the face of the driving snow:
"Come in here, snowman. Come in here!"
"I ain't no snowman," drawled the colored boy. "But I sure is as cold as a snowman could possibly be."
"It's warmer inside here than it is out there," Margy said. "Although we're not any too warm. Our steampipes don't hum. But