ooping their branches
under the weight which was almost too much for them. The fences had a
pretty dressing, like the thick white frosting of a cake; the fields
and gardens and roadway lay hidden under the soft warm carpet that was
spread everywhere. But the snow clouds were all gone; and the clearest
bright blue sky looked down through the white-laden tree branches.

"How much there is of it!" said Matilda.

"What?" said Norton.

"Why, I mean snow, Norton."

"Oh! Yes; there is apt to be a good deal of it," said Norton, "when it
falls as hard as it can all one day and two nights."

"But Norton, to think that all that snow is just those elegant little
star feathers piled up; all over the fields and house roofs, a foot and
a half thick, it is all those feathery stars!"

"Well," said Norton; "what of it?"

"Why it is wonderful," said Matilda. "It almost seems like a waste,
doesn't it? only that couldn't be."

"A waste?" said Norton. "A waste of what?"

"Why nobody sees, or thinks, that the street is covered with such
beautiful things--the street and the fields and the houses; people only
think it is snow, and that's all; when it is just little wonders of
beauty, of a great many sorts too. It seems very strange."

"Only to you," said Norton. "It'll be rich to shew you things."

"But why do you suppose it is so, Norton? I should like to ask Mr.
Richmond."

"Mr. Richmond couldn't tell," said Norton.

"It must be that God is so rich," Matilda went on reverently. "So
rich!" she repeated, looking at the piled-up burden of snow along the
house roofs of the street. "But then, Norton, he must care to have
things beautiful."

"Pink!" exclaimed Norton, looking at his little companion with an air
half of amusement and half of something like vexation.

"Well, don't you think so? Because nobody sees those white feathers of
frost piled up there, and these that the horses are treading under
feet. They do nobody any good."

"It does you good to know they are there," said Norton.

"That's true!" exclaimed Matilda. "O I'm very glad to know about them;
and I am very glad the snow is so wonderful; and I am glad to feel that
God is so rich, and that he has made things so beautiful."

There was something in this speech that jarred upon Norton; something,
though he could not have told what it was, that seemed to separate
Matilda from him; there was a sweet, innocent kind of _appropriation_
which he could not share; it told