two children asked their mother if they could play in the
new-fallen snow.
The children lived in the city and
had no wider play place than a little garden before the house, divided
from the street by a white
fence. Their
mother bundled them up in woolen jackets and wadded sacks, and a pair of
striped
gaiters on each little pair of legs, and worsted mittens
on their hands. Out they ran, with a hop-skip-and-jump, into the heart
of a huge
snowdrift. When they had frosted one another all over with
handfuls of snow, they had a new idea.
"Let us make an image out of snow,"
said the older sister. "It shall be our little sister and shall run about and play
with us all winter long!"
"Oh, yes!" cried the little brother. "And mother shall see it."
"But she must not make her come into the
warm parlor, for our little snow
sister will not love the warmth."
So the children began this great business of making a
snow image that should run about. It seemed, in fact, not so much to be made by the children as
to grow
up under their hands as they were playing and talking
about it.
"Here is the snow for her dress.
Oh, how beautiful she
begins to look," said the boy as
he came floundering through the drifts.
"We must have some shining little bits of ice to make the brightness of her eyes. She is not finished yet," said the girl.
"Here they are," cried the boy. "Mother, mother! Look out and see what a nice little girl we have made!"
Their mother put down her work for
an instant and looked out of the window. She was dazzled by the sun that
had sunk almost to the edge of
the world so she could not see the garden very distinctly.
Still, through all the brightness of the sun and the snow, she saw a
strange,
small white figure in the garden. The boy was bringing fresh
snow, and his sister was moulding it as a sculptor adds clay to his model.
The
longer she
looked, the more and more surprised she grew.
Just then there came a breeze of the
pure west wind blowing through the garden. It sounded so wintry cold
that the mother was about to tap
on the window pane to call the children in, when they both
cried out to her with one voice:
"Mother, mother! We have finished our little snow sister and she is running about the garden with us!"
Why, if you will believe me, there was a small figure of
a girl dressed all in white, with rosy cheeks and golden curls, playing
with the children. She was none of the neighboring
children. Not one had so sweet a face. Her dress fluttered in the
breeze; she danced
about in tiny white slippers. She was like a flying
snowdrift.
"Who is this child?" the mother asked. "Does she live near us?"
The older child laughed that her mother could
not understand so clear a matter. "This is our little snow sister," she
said, "whom we have just been
making."
Just then the garden gate was thrown
open and the children's father came in. A fur cap was drawn down over
his ears and the thickest of
gloves covered his hands. He had been working all day and
was glad to get home. He smiled as he saw the children and their mother.
His
heart was tender, but his head was as hard and
impenetrable as one of the iron pots that he sold in his hardware shop.
At once, though, he
perceived the little white stranger playing in the
garden.
"What little girl is that," he asked, "out in such bitter weather in a flimsy white gown and those thin slippers?"
"I don't know," the mother said. "The children say she is nothing but a snow image that they have been making this afternoon."
"This little stranger must be brought in out
of the snow. We will take her
into the parlor, and you shall give her a supper of warm
bread and milk and make her as comfortable as you can."
But the children seized their father by the hand.
"No," they cried. "This is our little snow girl, and she needs the cold west wind to breathe."
The father laughed. "Nonsense," he said.
"Come, you odd little thing," cried
the honest man, seizing the snow child by her hand. "I have caught you
at last and will make you
comfortable in spite of yourself. We will put a nice new
pair of stockings on your feet and you shall have a warm shawl to wrap
yourself
in. Your poor little nose, I am afraid, is frost bitten.
But we will make it all right. Come along in."
So he led the snow child toward the
house. She followed him, drooping and reluctant. All the glow and
sparkle were gone from her.
"After all," said the mother, "she does look as if she were made of snow."
A puff of the west wind blew against the snow child; she sparkled again like a star.
"That is because she is half frozen, poor little thing!" said the father. "Here we are where it is warm!"
Sad and drooping looked the little
white maiden as she stood on the hearth rug. The heat of the stove
struck her like a pestilence. She
looked wistfully toward the windows and caught a glimpse,
through its red curtains, of the snow-covered roofs, the frosty stars
and the
delicious intensity of the cold night.
The mother had gone in search of the shawl and stockings, and the boy and girl looked with terror at their little snow sister.
"I am going to find her parents,"
said the father, but he had scarcely reached the gate when he heard the
children scream. He saw their
mother's white face at the window.
"There is no need of going for the child's parents," she said.
There was no trace of the little
white maiden, unless it were a heap of snow which, while they were
gazing at it, melted quite away upon
the hearth rug.
"What a quantity of snow the
children brought in on their feet," their father said at last. "It has
made quite a puddle here before the
stove."
The stove, through the glass of its
door, seemed to grin like a red-eyed demon at the mischief which it had
done.
from "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
