"Well, maybe, when we get the tunnel finished, and if it isn't too cold, I'll take you out," promised their father.

After dinner he and Uncle Frank began work on the tunnel again. The storm seemed to be stopping a little and the wind did not blow so hard.

"Please, Mother, couldn't Jan and I go out, just for a little while?"

begged Teddy toward evening, when it was getting almost too dark for Mr.

Martin and Uncle Frank to see to dig in the tunnel.

"What do you think, Aunt Jo?" asked Mrs. Martin.

"Oh, I should think it wouldn't hurt them to go out for a few minutes.

Wrap them up well, and I'll go with them, on the side of the house where there isn't so much snow. But I wouldn't let Baby William go."

"No, I'll not."

So Ted and Jan and Aunt Jo got on their warm wraps and stepped out of the front door, where Daddy Martin and Uncle Frank had cleared a place on the veranda. Trouble cried to go, but, though the storm was not as bad as it had been at the start, it was too cold for him.

Ted and Janet did not mind it at first. They ran around, laughed, shouted and threw the snow. Then they began to feel the cold, which was more severe than they had thought.

"Oh, what big drifts!" cried Teddy, as he saw some out in the road.

"Awful big!" agreed Janet. "Let's go and look in the tunnel."

There was little to see, however, except a big white hole in the great drift, for Daddy Martin and Uncle Frank were at the far end, digging their way to the barn and Nicknack.

"Come now, it's time to go in," said Aunt Jo. "I promised your mother I'd keep you out only a little while. I think it's going to storm worse than ever. Come on in!"

"Please wait until I take one jump!" begged Teddy.

He gave a run and a jump, down a little side hill in the yard near the house. Into a pile of snow he leaped, and the next instant he had disappeared from sight! The snow had closed over his head!

"Oh, where is he? Where's Teddy?" cried Janet, very much frightened.

"I guess he's in the big drift!" answered Aunt Jo.

"Oh, Daddy! Uncle Frank!" cried Janet. "Come quick! Teddy's in a big drift!"

CHAPTER XVIII

NICKNACK IS GONE

Daddy Martin and Uncle Frank came running from the snow tunnel. Each one carried a shovel, for while the Curlytops' father had been digging away at the snow with his shovel, Uncle Frank had used the other to pile into the basket the loosened heap of white flakes.

"What's the matter?" asked Janet's father as he looked at her. "Why did you call me?"

"'Cause Teddy's in a big drift--down there!" she answered, pointing.

"Yes, he really did jump down there, and the snow was so soft that he went all the way through," added Aunt Jo.

"Then we must get him out in a hurry!" cried Uncle Frank. "Come on, d.i.c.k! This will be a new kind of digging for us."

"I should say so!" exclaimed Mr. Martin.

The two men ran toward the big drift, but when they got close they walked more carefully, for they did not want to make more snow fall in on top of Teddy through the hole he left when he jumped into the big drift.

"Are you down there, Son?" asked Mr. Martin, leaning over the hole and calling to the little boy.

Janet began to cry. She was afraid she would never see her brother again, and she loved him very much.

"Don't cry," said Uncle Frank kindly. "Well get Teddy out all right. Did he answer you?" he inquired of Daddy Martin.

"Not yet, but I guess----"

Just then a voice seemed to call from under their very feet.

"Here I am!" it said. "Down in a big pile of snow. Say, can you get me out? Every time I wiggle more snow falls in on top of me!"

"We'll get you out all right, Ted!" shouted his father. "Just keep as still as you can. Can you breathe all right?"

"Yep!" came back the answer, as if from far away.

Then Daddy Martin and Uncle Frank began to dig in the big drifts with their shovels, while Aunt Jo and Janet looked on. As yet Mrs. Martin and Nora knew nothing about what had happened, nor did Trouble.

"But it's of no use to tell your mother and frighten her, Janet," said Aunt Jo. "They'll have Teddy dug out in a minute, and then he can tell her himself what happened to him, and we'll all have a good laugh over it."

"Won't he smother?" asked Janet.

"Oh, no," answered Aunt Jo. "Falling under snow isn't like falling under water. There is a little air in snow but not any in water--at least not any we can breathe, though a fish can. But still if a person was kept under heavily packed snow too long he would smother, I suppose. However, that won't happen to Teddy. They're getting to him."

Uncle Frank and Daddy Martin were tossing the snow away from the drift by big shovelfuls. In a little while they had dug down to where Teddy stood in a little hollow place he had scooped out for himself with his hands. He was covered with snow, but was not hurt, for falling in the big drift, he said, was like tumbling into a feather bed--the kind Trouble had once cut up when he was at his grandmother's on Cherry Farm.

"Well, how in the world did you get down there?" asked Teddy's father, when the little boy was lifted up safe on the path again, and the snow had mostly been brushed from him.

"I--I just jumped," Teddy answered. "I wanted to see how far I could go and I didn't think about that being the edge of the terrace."

For the big drift was on the edge of a terrace, where the front lawn was raised up from the rest of the yard. So the drift was deeper than any of the other piles of snow around it.

"However, you're not hurt as far as I can see," went on Mr. Martin. "But please don't go in any more drifts. Uncle Frank and I won't have time to dig you out, for we must keep at work on the tunnel."

"Isn't it finished yet?" asked Aunt Jo.

"No. And I don't believe it will be to-night. It's getting late now and we can't work much longer. It's going to snow more, too," added the father of the Curlytops as he looked up at the sky, from the gray clouds of which more white flakes were falling.

"Can't we go into the tunnel?" asked Teddy, who did not seem much frightened by what had happened to him.

"Well, yes, I s'pose you could go in a little way," his father answered.