laughed and said she didn't mind answering questions at all.

As soon as lunch was over, Miss Davis helped them get into their coats
and wraps and watched them march out to the back lot for their fun.
Jessie Smiley wore a new scarlet sweater that came down to the edge of
her dress and was so warm and snug that she said she did not need to
wear her coat with it. Miss Davis said she thought she would be warm
enough, too, without the coat, and she knew she could run more easily.

"Not that a good soldier runs," she explained, laughing a little as she
buttoned the sweater under Jessie's chin. "But a snowball army soldier
has to run, I know."

Jessie left her rubbers in the cloakroom, too, for she had her rubber
boots. She had worn her rubbers to school that morning. The boots had
been left in the cloakroom since the last snowstorm. Jessie wanted to
wear one rubber and one boot, but Miss Davis said she thought that two
boots would be better, so Jessie had taken her advice.

"Whee, there's a lot of snow!" cried Sunny Boy, wading out into the
middle of the lot, followed by his army. "We ought to get a lot of
bullets made. And a fort. We must build a fort."

Oliver took his army over at one end of the lot and set them to work
making snowballs. The boys made more balls than the girls did. But
then the girls were so anxious to make theirs smooth and round that
they did not work very quickly. Sunny Boy soon noticed that Dorothy
Peters scraped and packed and patted one snowball while he was making
four.

Finally General Dunlap shouted to General Sunny Boy and the battle was
about to start when something happened that put all thoughts of a
snowball fight out of the heads of soldiers and generals alike.

The battlefield, that is the back lot, you know, was directly back of
Miss May's school. A large porch ran across the rear of the building
and the back yard joined the vacant lot. Just as Sunny Boy waved his
hand to signal Oliver that he was ready, Maria came out on the porch of
the school.

"Fire!" she shouted. "Fire! The school is on fire!"

If Miss May or Miss Davis had been in the building, it never would have
happened. Miss May would have telephoned the fire department quietly
at the first sign of smoke and Miss Davis would have picked up the
brass fire extinguisher that stood in the hall and at least have tried
to put the fire out. But Miss May and Miss Davis had gone down town,
believing that the chi