y, it had a very
cheerful aspect, now that the sun was shining on it. The children dwelt
in a city, and had no wider play-place than a little garden before the
house, divided by a white fence from the street, and with a pear-tree
and two or three plum-trees overshadowing it, and some rose-bushes just
in front of the parlor-windows. The trees and shrubs, however, were now
leafless, and their twigs were enveloped in the light snow, which thus
made a kind of wintry foliage, with here and there a pendent icicle for
the fruit.

"Yes, Violet,--yes, my little Peony," said their kind mother, "you may
go out and play in the new snow."

Accordingly, the good lady bundled up her darlings in woollen jackets
and wadded sacks, and put comforters round their necks, and a pair of
striped gaiters on each little pair of legs, and worsted mittens on
their hands, and gave them a kiss apiece, by way of a spell to keep
away Jack Frost. Forth sallied the two children, with a
hop-skip-and-jump, that carried them at once into the very heart of a
huge snow-drift, whence Violet emerged like a snow-bunting, while
little Peony floundered out with his round face in full bloom. Then
what a merry time had they! To look at them, frolicking in the wintry
garden, you would have thought that the dark and pitiless storm had
been sent for no other purpose but to provide a new plaything for
Violet and Peony; and that they themselves had beer created, as the
snow-birds were, to take delight only in the tempest, and in the white
mantle which it spread over the earth.

At last, when they had frosted one another all over with handfuls of
snow, Violet, after laughing heartily at little Peony's figure, was
struck with a new idea.

"You look exactly like a snow-image, Peony," said she, "if your cheeks
were not so red. And that puts me in mind! Let us make an image out of
snow,--an image of a little girl,--and it shall be our sister, and
shall run about and play with us all winter long. Won't it be nice?"

"Oh yes!" cried Peony, as plainly as he could speak, for he was but a
little boy. "That will be nice! And mamma shall see it!"

"Yes," answered Violet; "mamma shall see the new little girl. But she
must not make her come into the warm parlor; for, you know, our little
snow-sister will not love the warmth."

And forthwith the children began this great business of making a
snow-image that should run about; while their mother, who was sitting
at the window a