nd
looked like two banks of flowers. Sweet peas drooped over the boxes, and
the rosebushes shot forth long branches, which were trained about the
windows and clustered together almost like a triumphal arch of leaves
and flowers.

The boxes were very high, and the children knew they must not climb upon
them without permission; but they often had leave to step out and sit
upon their little stools under the rosebushes or play quietly together.

In winter all this pleasure came to an end, for the windows were
sometimes quite frozen over. But they would warm copper pennies on the
stove and hold the warm pennies against the frozen pane; then there
would soon be a little round hole through which they could peep, and the
soft, bright eyes of the little boy and girl would sparkle through the
hole at each window as they looked at each other. Their names were Kay
and Gerda. In summer they could be together with one jump from the
window, but in winter they had to go up and down the long staircase and
out through the snow before they could meet.

"See! there are the white bees swarming," said Kay's old grandmother one
day when it was snowing.

"Have they a queen bee?" asked the little boy, for he knew that the real
bees always had a queen.

"To be sure they have," said the grandmother. "She is flying there where
the swarm is thickest. She is the largest of them all and never remains
on the earth, but flies up to the dark clouds. Often at midnight she
flies through the streets of the town and breathes with her frosty
breath upon the windows; then the ice freezes on the panes into
wonderful forms that look like flowers and castles."

"Yes, I have seen them," said both the children; and they knew it must
be true.

"Can the Snow Queen come in here?" asked the little girl.

"Only let her come," said the boy. "I'll put her on the warm stove, and
then she'll melt."

The grandmother smoothed his hair and told him more stories.

That same evening when little Kay was at home, half undressed, he
climbed upon a chair by the window and peeped out through the little
round hole. A few flakes of snow were falling, and one of them, rather
larger than the rest, alighted on the edge of one of the flower boxes.
Strange to say, this snowflake grew larger and larger till at last it
took the form of a woman dressed in garments of white gauze, which
looked like millions of starry snowflakes linked together. She was fair
and beautiful, but made