snow in the Garden
was of powdered sugar, as it is in all well-informed stories; but
beyond the hedge, as far as the eye could reach (and Sara had quite a
long eye for her age--her mother was kept busy letting out hems) the
snow was of powdered silver. I am sorry to say it was not good to eat
at all; but it was so much more beautiful than the common garden kind
that I do not believe you would have minded, any more than Sara did.
It was, of course, fairy snow, while the other was just the plain
imaginary kind.

But the scene before her was so strange and animated that even the
snow could not hold Sara's attention for long. (It was slippery, for
one thing; and, besides, the crust was thin, and Sara's attention was
so excited and skippy that it was continually breaking through.)

Beyond Avrillia's house on one side, in the direction Sara had gone
with Pirlaps to see his relations, was a long, delightful hill; and
there all the seventy children were coasting and snowballing. Every
one of them had on a cap that seemed to be made of a tiny red pepper,
and their little mittened fists looked exactly like holly-berries.
Their sleds were of curled rose-petals, and Sara knew without being
told that it had cost their mother quite a struggle to spare so many
from the supply she had collected to write poems on. Sara had watched
them for several minutes before she noticed that they always coasted
uphill and dragged their sleds down. And all the time the air flashed
with snowballs so big that they looked like the tantalizing silver
balls which sometimes occur in the nicest boxes of chocolates.

It was some time before Sara could disengage her attention (it had
become entangled in the rope on one of the smaller children's sleds)
to examine the extraordinary scene near at hand. For, on the lawn at
one side of Avrillia's house, opposite the rose-garden, where Pirlaps
usually sat painting under the fog-bushes, a large table had been
placed; and around it were assembled a group of the most
remarkable-looking persons Sara had ever seen. If they had not been so
large, Sara would have been sure that they were birds; but the largest
one was a head taller than Sara herself, and the very smallest was at
least as large as her youngest cousin.

Pirlaps, who was helping Yassuh put some sort of food on the table,
looked up and saw Sara; and in a moment he put down the dish he had in
his hand and seemed to slip away unnoticed, to come to her. Sar