midnight
They built a famous snowman , with a bucket for a cap , lumps of coal for eyes and nose , and stuck into its mouth an old long-stemmed clay pipe belonging to Uncle Rufus . He was a jaunty looking snowman for a little while ; but although he was so tall that the top of his hat was level with the peak of the woodshed roof , before the Corner House girls went to bed he stood more than knee deep in the drifted snow . Neale had to make the round of his furnaces . Fortunately they were all in the neighborhood , but he had a stiff fight to get through the storm to the cobbler 's little cottage before midnight . At that `` witching hour , '' if any of the Corner House girls had been awake and had looked out of the window , they would have seen that the snowman was then buried to his waist ! When daylight should have appeared , snow was still falling . A wind had arisen , and on one side of the old Corner House the drift entirely masked the windows .