Now I did not think it necessary to say that the snow in the Garden was of powdered sugar, as it is in all well-informed stories; but beyond the hedge, as far as the eye could reach (and Sara had quite a long eye for her age—­her mother was kept busy letting out hems) the snow was of powdered silver.  I am sorry to say it was not good to eat at all; but it was so much more beautiful than the common garden kind that I do not believe you would have minded, any more than Sara did.  It was, of course, fairy snow, while the other was just the plain imaginary kind.

But the scene before her was so strange and animated that even the snow could not hold Sara’s attention for long. (It was slippery, for one thing; and, besides, the crust was thin, and Sara’s attention was so excited and skippy that it was continually breaking through.)

Beyond Avrillia’s house on one side, in the direction Sara had gone with Pirlaps to see his relations, was a long, delightful hill; and there all the seventy children were coasting and snowballing.  Every one of them had on a cap that seemed to be made of a tiny red pepper, and their little mittened fists looked exactly like holly-berries.  Their sleds were of curled rose-petals, and Sara knew without being told that it had cost their mother quite a struggle to spare so many from the supply she had collected to write poems on.  Sara had watched them for several minutes before she noticed that they always coasted uphill and dragged their sleds down.  And all the time the air flashed with snowballs so big that they looked like the tantalizing silver balls which sometimes occur in the nicest boxes of chocolates.

It was some time before Sara could disengage her attention (it had become entangled in the rope on one of the smaller children’s sleds) to examine the extraordinary scene near at hand.  For, on the lawn at one side of Avrillia’s house, opposite the rose-garden, where Pirlaps usually sat painting under the fog-bushes, a large table had been placed; and around it were assembled a group of the most remarkable-looking persons Sara had ever seen.  If they had not been so large, Sara would have been sure that they were birds; but the largest one was a head taller than Sara herself, and the very smallest was at least as large as her youngest cousin.

Pirlaps, who was helping Yassuh put some sort of food on the table, looked up and saw Sara; and in a moment he put down the dish he had in his hand and seemed to slip away unnoticed, to come to her.  Sara wondered at this, for Pirlaps was always so polite; it would have been much more like him to excuse himself with a courteous bow to his guests.