“Come, you odd little thing!” cried the honest man, seizing her by the hand, “I have caught you at last, and will make you comfortable in spite of yourself.  We will put a nice warm pair of worsted stockings on your frozen little feet, and you shall have a good thick shawl to wrap yourself in.  Your poor white nose, I am afraid, is actually frost-bitten.  But we will make it all right.  Come along in.”

And so, with a most benevolent smile on his sagacious visage, all purple as it was with the cold, this very well-meaning gentleman took the snow-child by the hand and led her towards the house.  She followed him, droopingly and reluctant; for all the glow and sparkle was gone out of her figure; and whereas just before she had resembled a bright frosty, star-gemmed evening, with a crimson gleam on the cold horizon, she now looked as dull and languid as a thaw.  As kind Mr. Lindsey led her up the steps of the door, Violet and Peony looked into his face—­their eyes full of tears, which froze before they could run down their cheeks—­and again entreated him not to bring their snow-image into the house.

“Not bring her in!” exclaimed the kind-hearted man.  “Why, you are crazy, my little Violet!—­quite crazy, my small Peony!  She is so cold, already, that her hand has almost frozen mine, in spite of my thick gloves.  Would you have her freeze to death?”

His wife, as he came up the steps, had been taking another long, earnest, almost awe-stricken gaze at the little white stranger.  She hardly knew whether it was a dream or not, but she could not help fancying that she saw the delicate print of Violet’s fingers on the child’s neck.  It looked just as if, while Violet was shaping out the image, she had given it a gentle pat with her hand, and had neglected to smooth the impression quite away.

“After all, husband,” said the mother, recurring to her idea that the angels would be as much delighted to play with Violet and Peony as she herself was—­“after all, she does look strangely like a snow-image!  I do believe she is made of snow!”

A puff of the west-wind blew against the snow-child, and again she sparkled like a star.

“Snow!” repeated good Mr. Lindsey, drawing the reluctant guest over this hospitable threshold.  “No wonder she looks like snow.  She is half frozen, poor little thing!  But a good fire will put everything to rights.”

Without further talk, and always with the same best intentions, this highly benevolent and common-sensible individual led the little white damsel—­drooping, drooping, drooping, more and more—­out of the frosty air, and into his comfortable parlour.  A Heidenberg stove, filled to the brim with intensely burning anthracite, was sending a bright gleam through the isinglass of its iron door, and causing the vase of water on its top to fume and bubble with excitement.  A warm, sultry smell was diffused throughout the room.  A thermometer on the wall farthest from the stove stood at eighty degrees.  The parlour was hung with red curtains, and covered with a red carpet, and looked just as warm as it felt.  The difference betwixt the atmosphere here and the cold, wintry twilight out of doors, was like stepping at once from Nova Zembla to the hottest part of India, or from the North Pole into an oven.  O, this was a fine place for the little white stranger!