lack, just outside the fence, and as the four little Blossoms
watched, Tim flung a snowball smack at the poor defenseless snow man.

"Leave 'em alone," counseled Norah, putting a restraining hand on
Twaddles, who was making for the door. "As long as 'tis only the snow
man they're aiming at, let 'em be."

But as Norah spoke, whiz! through the kitchen door came a big snowball.
It landed right on top of the basket of wash, and lay wet and dirty on
top of a ruffled guimpe of Dot's.

"The dirty ragamuffins!" The angry Norah snatched the slushy ball and
flung it into the coal-scuttle. "The miserable spalpeens!"

Bobby seized his cap.

"I'll fix them!" he muttered, as he dashed out of the house.

Tim Roon and Charlie Black saw him coming, and they judged that it
would be better to run. They didn't want to fight Bobby, even two to
one, so close to his own house. Some one might come out and help him.

The two boys tore up the street, Bobby after them. Unfortunately,
Bobby ran head-first into an old gentleman who, before he let him go,
collared him and read him a lecture on the rights of people in the
street. This gave Tim and Charlie a chance to hide behind some bushes
on a vacant lot.

"Jump on him when he comes along," advised Tim, who was not a fair
fighter.

So when Bobby came running by, for he did not know how far up the
street the boys had gone, Tim and Charlie pounced on him and rolled him
in the snow.

"None of that," said a strange voice. "Two to one's no fair. One of
you leave off, or I'll stop the fight."

The strange voice belonged to a high-school boy, Stanley Reeves, and
both Tim and Charlie knew he was a member of the gymnasium wrestling
team and quite capable of stopping any small-boy fight.

"You're too old to fight a boy of that size, anyway," declared Stanley,
surveying Tim with disgust.

"But I'm going to punch him," announced Bobby heatedly.

"Oh, you are?" said Reeves with interest. "Go ahead, then, and I'll
sit here and keep an eye on this chicken to see that he doesn't pitch
in at the wrong moment"

Reeves took a firm hold on Charlie's coat collar and backed him off to
one side.

"Wash his face for him--it needs it," the high-school lad went on to
Bobby.

Like a small but angry bumble bee, Bobby flew at Tim. They clinched
and plunged head-long into the snow, where they pounded and wrestled
and grunted and gasped as all boys do when they are fighting a thing
out. Tim was