, which Peony and I have been making. Peony will tell
you so, as well as I."

"Yes, mamma," asseverated Peony, with much gravity in his crimson
little phiz; "this is 'ittle snow-child. Is not she a nice one? But,
mamma, her hand is, oh, so very cold!"

While mamma still hesitated what to think and what to do, the
street-gate was thrown open, and the father of Violet and Peony
appeared, wrapped in a pilot-cloth sack, with a fur cap drawn down
over his ears, and the thickest of gloves upon his hands. Mr. Lindsey
was a middle-aged man, with a weary and yet a happy look in his
wind-flushed and frost-pinched face, as if he had been busy all the
day long, and was glad to get back to his quiet home. His eyes
brightened at the sight of his wife and children, although he could
not help uttering a word or two of surprise, at finding the whole
family in the open air, on so bleak a day, and after sunset too. He
soon perceived the little white stranger, sporting to and fro in the
garden, like a dancing snow-wreath, and the flock of snow-birds
fluttering about her head.

"Pray, what little girl may that be?" inquired this very sensible man.
"Surely her mother must be crazy, to let her go out in such bitter
weather as it has been to-day, with only that flimsy white gown, and
those thin slippers!"

"My dear husband," said his wife, "I know no more about the little
thing than you do. Some neighbor's child, I suppose. Our Violet and
Peony," she added, laughing at herself for repeating so absurd a
story, "insist that she is nothing but a snow-image, which they have
been busy about in the garden, almost all the afternoon."

As she said this, the mother glanced her eyes toward the spot where
the children's snow-image had been made. What was her surprise, on
perceiving that there was not the slightest trace of so much
labor!--no image at all!--no piled-up heap of snow!--nothing whatever,
save the prints of little footsteps around a vacant space!

"This is very strange!" said she.

"What is strange, dear mother?" asked Violet. "Dear father, do not you
see how it is? This is our snow-image, which Peony and I have made,
because we wanted another playmate. Did not we, Peony?"

"Yes, papa," said crimson Peony. "This be our 'ittle snow-sister. Is
she not beau-ti-ful? But she gave me such a cold kiss!"

"Poh, nonsense, children!" cried their good, honest father, who, as we
have already intimated, had an exceedingly common-sensible way of