managed to have something bigger
than a flower pot for a garden. They were not brother and sister, but
they were just as fond of each other as if they had been. Their parents
lived opposite each other in two attic rooms. The roof of one house just
touched the roof of the next one, with only a rain-water gutter between
them. They each had a little dormer window, and one only had to step
over the gutter to get from one house to the other. Each of the parents
had a large window-box, in which they grew pot herbs and a little
rose-tree. There was one in each box, and they both grew splendidly.
Then it occurred to the parents to put the boxes across the gutter, from
house to house, and they looked just like two banks of flowers. The pea
vines hung down over the edges of the boxes, and the roses threw out
long creepers which twined round the windows. It was almost like a green
triumphal arch. The boxes were high, and the children knew they must not
climb up on to them, but they were often allowed to have their little
stools out under the rose-trees, and there they had delightful games. Of
course in the winter there was an end to these amusements. The windows
were often covered with hoar-frost; then they would warm coppers on the
stove and stick them on the frozen panes, where they made lovely
peep-holes, as round as possible. Then a bright eye would peep through
these holes, one from each window. The little boy's name was Kay, and
the little girl's Gerda.

In the summer they could reach each other with one bound, but in the
winter they had to go down all the stairs in one house and up all the
stairs in the other, and outside there were snowdrifts.

'Look! the white bees are swarming,' said the old grandmother.

'Have they a queen bee, too?' asked the little boy, for he knew that
there was a queen among the real bees.

'Yes, indeed they have,' said the grandmother. 'She flies where the
swarm is thickest. She is biggest of them all, and she never remains on
the ground. She always flies up again to the sky. Many a winter's night
she flies through the streets and peeps in at the windows, and then the
ice freezes on the panes into wonderful patterns like flowers.'

'Oh yes, we have seen that,' said both children, and then they knew
it was true.

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

'Just let her come,' said the boy, 'and I will put her on the stove,
where she will melt.'

But the grandmother smoothed