“They do everything better than other children,” said she, very complacently.  “No wonder they make better snow-images!”

She sat down again to her work, and made as much haste with it as possible; because twilight would soon come, and Peony’s frock was not yet finished, and grandfather was expected, by railroad, pretty early in the morning.  Faster and faster, therefore, went her flying fingers.  The children, likewise, kept busily at work in the garden, and still the mother listened, whenever she could catch a word.  She was amused to observe how their little imaginations had got mixed up with what they were doing, and were carried away by it.  They seemed positively to think that the snow-child would run about and play with them.

“What a nice playmate she will be for us, all winter long!” said Violet.  “I hope papa will not be afraid of her giving us a cold!  Sha’n’t you love her dearly, Peony?”

“O yes!” cried Peony.  “And I will hug her and she shall sit down close by me, and drink some of my warm milk!”

“O no, Peony!” answered Violet, with grave wisdom.  “That will not do at all.  Warm milk will not be wholesome for our little snow-sister.  Little snow-people, like her, eat nothing but icicles.  No, no, Peony; we must not give her anything warm to drink!”

There was a minute or two of silence; for Peony, whose short legs were never weary, had gone on a pilgrimage again to the other side of the garden.  All of a sudden, Violet cried out, loudly and joyfully—­

“Look here, Peony!  Come quickly!  A light has been shining on her cheek out of that rose-coloured cloud! and the colour does not go away!  Is not that beautiful!”

“Yes; it is beau-ti-ful,” answered Peony, pronouncing the three syllables with deliberate accuracy.  “O Violet, only look at her hair!  It is all like gold!”

“O, certainly,” said Violet, with tranquillity, as if it were very much a matter of course.  “That colour, you know, comes from the golden clouds, that we see up there in the sky.  She is almost finished now.  But her lips must be made very red—­redder than her cheeks.  Perhaps, Peony, it will make them red if we both kiss them!”

Accordingly, the mother heard two smart little smacks, as if both her children were kissing the snow-image on its frozen mouth.  But, as this did not seem to make the lips quite red enough, Violet next proposed that the snow-child should be invited to kiss Peony’s scarlet cheek.

“Come, ’ittle snow-sister, kiss me!” cried Peony.

“There! she has kissed you,” added Violet, “and her lips are very red.  And she blushed a little, too!”

“O, what a cold kiss!” cried Peony.

Just then, there came a breeze of the pure west-wind, sweeping through the garden and rattling the parlour-windows.  It sounded so wintry cold, that the mother was about to tap on the window-pane with her thimbled finger, to summon the two children in, when they both cried out to her with one voice.  The tone was not a tone of surprise, although they were evidently a good deal excited; it appeared rather as if they were very much rejoiced at some event that had now happened, but which they had been looking for, and had reckoned upon all along.