Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

THE SNOW MAN

"Oh, Bunny! what you making such a big nose for?"

"So I can hit it easier, Sue, when I peg snowballs at it."

Bunny Brown and his sister Sue were in the backyard of their home, making a big man of snow. There had been quite a storm the day before, and many white flakes had fallen. As soon as the storm stopped and the weather grew warm enough, Mrs. Brown let Bunny and Sue go out to play. And of course one of the first things they did, after running about in the clean white snow, making "tracks," was to start a snow man.

Bunny was working away at the face of the white chap when Sue asked him about the big nose he was making.

"What'd you say you were going to do, Bunny?" asked Sue, who was digging away in the snow about where the man's legs would be when he was finished.

"I said—" replied her brother, as he pressed some snow in his red-mittened hand, getting ready to plaster it on the man's funny face—"I said I was making his nose big so I could hit it easier with a snowball."

"Oh, Bunny!" cried Sue, "are you going to throw snowballs at our nice snow man?"

"Of course!" replied Bunny. "That's what we're making him for! I'm going to put a hat on him, too. Course a hat's easier to hit than a nose, 'specially a tall hat like the one I'm going to make. You can throw at the hat if you want to and I'll throw at the nose."

"Oh, Bunny!" exclaimed Sue, and from her voice you might have thought Bunny had said he was going to throw a snowball at Wango, the pet monkey of Mr. Jed Winkler, an animal of which Bunny Brown and his sister Sue were very fond. "Bunny, don't hurt him!"

"Pooh! You don't s'pose a snow man can feel, do you?" asked Bunny, turning to look at his sister. He had just begun to understand why it was that Sue did not want him to throw snowballs at the big white fellow when he was finished.

"Well, maybe he can't feel," said Sue, for she was really too old to have such a little child's belief. At least she felt she was too old to confess to such a feeling. "But what's the fun of making a nice snow man and then hitting him all over with snowballs? I'm not going to throw at his tall hat, even if you make one. Why can't you throw balls at something else, Bunny, like a tree or a telegraph pole?"

"'Cause I can peg at them any time," Bunny answered, with a laugh. "It's more fun to throw snowballs at a snow man and make believe he's real. He can't chase you then."

"Well, I'm not going to throw anything at our nice snow man," decided Sue, digging away with her little shovel to carve out the legs.

"You don't have to," said Bunny, fairly enough. "I'll do it all, Sue."

"Well," said his sister, with a shake of her head, "you can throw at your part of the snow man, if you like, but you can't throw at my part!"

"Which—which is your part?" asked Bunny, and he spoke as though greatly surprised.

"The legs," answered Sue. "I wish you wouldn't throw any snowballs at the legs, Bunny Brown."

"All right, I won't," he promised kindly. For Bunny was a year older than his sister, and, at most times, was kind and good to her....