e," said Mrs Enderby, sinking back faintly in
her easy-chair, after one of her attacks of spasms. "I am better now;
and if you will fan me for a minute or two, I shall be quite fit to see
the children--quite delighted to have them."

"I declare," said the maid, "here are the drops standing upon your face
this cold day, as if it was August! But if the pain is cone, never mind
anything else! And I, for one, won't say anything against your having
the children in; for I'm sure the seeing your friends has done you no
harm, and nothing but good."

"Pray, draw up the blind, Phoebe, and let me see something of the
sunshine. Bless me! how frosty the field looks, while I have been
stifled with heat for this hour past! I had better not go to the
window, however, for I begin to feel almost chilly already. Thank you,
Phoebe; you have fanned me enough. Now call the children, Phoebe."

Phoebe wrapped a cloak about her mistress's knees, pinned her shawl up
closer around her throat, and went to call the children in from the
parlour below. Matilda drew up her head and flattened her back, and
then asked her grandmamma how she did. George looked up anxiously in
the old lady's face.

"Ah, George," said she, smiling; "it is an odd face to look at, is not
it? How would you like your face to look as mine does?"

"Not at all," said George.

Mrs Enderby laughed heartily, and then told him that her face was not
unlike his once--as round, and as red, and as shining in frosty weather.

"Perhaps if you were to go out now into the frost, your face would look
as it used to do."

"I am afraid not. When my face looked like yours, it was when I was a
little girl, and used to slide and make snowballs as you do. That was a
long time ago. My face is wrinkled now, because I am old; and it is
pale, because I am ill."

George heard nothing after the word "snowballs." "I wish some more snow
would come," he observed. "We have plenty of ice down in the meadows,
but there has been only one fall of snow, and that melted almost
directly."

"Papa thinks there will be more snow very soon," observed Matilda.

"If there is, you children can do something for me that I should like
very much," said grandmamma. "Shall I tell you what it is?"

"Yes."

"You can make a snow-man in that field. I am sure Mr Grey will give
you leave."

"What good will that do you?" asked Matilda.

"I can sit here and watch you; and I shall like that exceedingly