“Drip! drip! drip!” went a soft little tapping noise.

Miss Mason heard it, too.  She thought the pipes in the cloak room had sprung a leak perhaps.

“Teacher!” Tim Roon’s hand waved wildly.  “Teacher, your desk’s leaking!”

Tim, for once, did not have a guilty conscience in connection with a piece of mischief, and he was delighted to have an opportunity to call attention to the fact.

“It’s leaking all over!” he volunteered.

“That will do, Tim,” said Miss Mason calmly.

She raised her desk lid and peered in.  Then she closed it and surveyed her class.  Bobby could feel his face getting red.  He looked down at his book.

“Robert Blossom,” said Miss Mason, “come here to me.”

Bobby went up the aisle which seemed at least two miles long.  Miss Mason did not ask him if he had put the snow in her desk.  She merely raised the lid again and pointed to the half melted snowballs.

“Take those out,” she commanded coldly.  “Throw them out of the window.  Then get a cloth and dry the inside of this desk and mop up the floor.  And you may stay an hour after school to-night.”

Bobby had to make a separate trip for each mushy snowball, the eyes of the class following him from the desk to the window and back again with maddening interest.  When he came back from a trip to the cellar to get a cloth from the janitor, for Miss Mason refused to help him, and began to dry the inside of the desk, they snickered audibly; but when he got down on his hands and knees and mopped the floor under the desk, they seemed to think it was the biggest kind of joke.  They did not dare laugh aloud, but Bobby could feel them smiling and nudging one another.

“Next time, I hope, you will leave the snow outside where it belongs,” said Miss Mason, when he had stayed his hour after school that night and she dismissed him.

“Yes’m,” murmured Bobby meekly.

“My, it’s been the worst day,” he confided to Father Blossom that evening.  “Nothing went right.  I had the meanest time!”

CHAPTER XII

BUILDING A SNOW MAN

The rehearsals for the play went on merrily, and the children were faithful in attendance.  Meg, though, was an hour late getting home from school one afternoon, and as Bobby could not practice without her, he was very much put out.

“Where have you been?” he demanded.  “Everybody’s been waiting for you.  Miss Mason didn’t keep you in, did she?”

Meg looked uncomfortable.

“No, I didn’t have to stay in,” she admitted.

“Then where were you?” insisted Bobby.

“I was hunting for my locket,” confessed Meg.  “I heard Daddy say the snow melted a lot last night, and I thought maybe I could find it.  But I didn’t.”  She sighed deeply.

Meg still clung to the hope of finding her locket, though the rest of the family had long ago given up the idea that it would ever be found.