"That's good," remarked Mrs. Brown. "We're digging you out, Bunny," she called.

"I don't guess he can hear you," said Helen, when no answer came from beneath the snow.

"I couldn't hear when I was in the snow house," said Charlie. "My ears were all stopped up."

"We'll soon have him out," declared Uncle Tad, tossing aside big shovelfuls of the damp snow. "It's a deep pile, though."

There were now three of them digging away at the pile of snow which hid Bunny Brown from sight. Of course Uncle Tad was doing the most work, as his shovel was so large. Pile after pile he tossed aside, and he was fast getting to the bottom, when, all of a sudden there was a cracking sound, and the handle of Uncle Tad's shovel broke in the middle.

"Oh, dear!" cried the old soldier. "This is too bad!"

"And we haven't another large shovel!" said Mrs. Brown. "Walter took our second one down to the dock with him this morning!"

"Well, perhaps I can make this do," said Uncle Tad. "Though I can't work as fast as I could if the handle wasn't broken."

"Sue, and Helen, run next door and see if you can borrow a large snow shovel," called Mrs. Brown. "Don't stop to tell them what it's for, or Bunny may smother."

"Oh, no'm, I guess he won't," Charlie said, as he dug away with the little shovel that Sue had been using. "When I was under the snow I could breathe all I wanted to."

Mrs. Brown said she was glad to hear this, but, for all that, she dug as fast as she could with the other small shovel, and Uncle Tad, using the one with the broken handle, did the best he could.

Helen and Sue hurried next door to see if they could borrow a broad wooden shovel, but before they returned Uncle Tad had managed to dig down through the pile of snow until he reached the ground and the side of the house foundation--the upper part of the cellar wall.

"Why, Bunny isn't here!" cried Uncle Tad, in great surprise.

"Isn't he?" asked the little boy's mother, looking over Uncle Tad's shoulder down into the hole in the snow pile.

"There isn't a sign of him," went on the soldier. "Are you sure you saw him get covered from sight here?" he asked Charlie.

"It was right here," answered Bunny's chum. "He was rolling a s...o...b..ll to make a hat for the man when down the snow slid off the roof. It covered Bunny and the s...o...b..ll he was rolling."

"Oh, we must hurry!" exclaimed Mrs. Brown, now growing very anxious. "He surely will be smothered, under the snow all this while!"

She began to dig again with the small shovel, and Uncle Tad was doing his best with the broken one when Sue and Helen, coming around the corner with a large shovel which they had borrowed next door, gave a sudden cry.

"What is it?" asked Mrs. Brown.

"There's Bunny now!" exclaimed Sue. "Look!"

They all looked, and, surely enough, Bunny was coming up the outside steps of the cellar. He walked up as if nothing had happened.

"Bunny Brown! what trick is this?" exclaimed his mother. "What made you pretend to be buried under all that snow and give us such a fright for, when you weren't there at all?"

"But I was there, Mother," Bunny said. "I was under the snow."

"Then how did you get out?" Uncle Tad asked. "It surely looks like a trick, Bunny Brown."

CHAPTER III

ORANGE BLOSSOMS

Bunny Brown walked from the cellarway over to where his mother, Uncle Tad, his sister, and his playmates stood. Uncle Tad and Mother Brown looked rather reproachfully at the little boy. They really thought he had played a joke on them, or at least that he had caused the other children to do so, sending them to cry that he was buried under the snow.

But Sue, Charlie, and Helen knew that Bunny had really been covered from sight under the snow. They knew there was no trick about it, though they did not know how it was Bunny appeared as if coming out of the cellar when he should have been under the snow.

"I didn't play any trick, Mother. Really I didn't," said Bunny earnestly. He had played tricks in times past, but his mother knew he always told the truth.

"Were you really under that pile of snow?" asked the old soldier.

"Yes, Uncle Tad, I was," Bunny answered. "The snow came down off the roof and covered me all up."

"Then why didn't I find you there when I dug all the way down to the ground and the cellar wall?" asked Uncle Tad.

"Because," answered Bunny, with a queer little smile on his rosy face, "when the snow piled on top of me, and knocked me down, I was right close by a cellar window. First I didn't know what to do. Then I saw the window, and I pushed on it, and it opened.

"I went through the window into the cellar. There was a box under the window inside the cellar, and I got on that and then I jumped off down to the floor.

"First I couldn't see anything, 'cause it was so dark there, but I could after a while, and I come out by the door."

"Oh, Bunny!" exclaimed his mother. "We never thought of the cellar windows! Of course I see how it could happen," she said to Uncle Tad.

"The pile of snow does cover a window."

She pointed toward one end of the big pile under which Bunny had been hidden. This end did, indeed, cover one of the low cellar windows, and when the snow was shoveled away it could be seen where the little boy had scrambled through.

"Say, it was lucky the cellar window wasn't fastened," said Charlie.

"It surely was!" agreed Bunny. "I was glad when it opened."

"I didn't know we had left any of them unbolted," Mrs. Brown said.

"We'll fasten it now. But don't get under any more snowslides, Bunny."

"Now we can finish making our snow man!" Bunny said, as his mother and uncle turned to go into the house.

"Yes, I guess there's no more danger of snow sliding off the roof,"

remarked Uncle Tad. "All that could fall has slid off."

"Don't forget to take Mr. Snyder's shovel back," Mother Brown called to the children.

They promised to return it, and then began an hour of fun with the snow man. Bunny finished making the tall white hat, and then he and Charlie threw s...o...b..a.l.l.s at it and at the nose of the snow man until he was so battered and plastered that he did not look at all like himself.

Sue and Helen threw a few s...o...b..a.l.l.s at the legs of the man, but they soon tired of this, for Charlie and Bunny grew so excited with their sport that there was not much chance for the girls.

"Let's go and slide downhill," proposed Sue.