d no wider play place than a
little garden before the house, divided from the street by a white
fence. The pear and plum trees, and the rose bushes in front of the
parlor window were covered with white, with here and there an icicle
for the fruit. It was a pleasant place to play. Their mother bundled
them up in woolen jackets and wadded sacks, and a pair of striped
gaiters on each little pair of legs, and worsted mittens on their
hands. Out they ran, with a hop-skip-and-jump, into the heart of a
huge snowdrift. When they had frosted one another all over with
handfuls of snow, Violet had a new idea.

"Let us make an image out of snow," she said. "It shall be our little
sister and shall run about and play with us all winter long!"

"Oh, yes!" cried Peony. "And mother shall see it."

"Yes," Violet answered. "Mother shall see the new little girl. But she
must not make her come into the warm parlor, for our little snow
sister will not love the warmth."

So the children began this great business of making a snow image that
should run about. Violet told Peony what to do, while with her own
careful fingers she shaped all the nicer parts of the snow figure. It
seemed, in fact, not so much to be made by the children as to grow up
under their hands as they were playing and talking about it. Their
mother, who was sitting at the window, watched them. The longer she
looked, the more and more surprised she grew.

"What remarkable children mine are!" she said to herself. "What other
children could have made anything so like a little girl's figure out
of snow at the first trial?"

"Peony, Peony!" cried Violet to her brother, "bring me some of that
fresh snow from the farthest corner where we have not been trampling.
I want to make our little snow sister's dress with it. You know it
must be white, just as it came out of the sky."

"Here it is, Violet!" Peony said as he came floundering through the
drifts. "Here is the snow for her dress. Oh, Violet, how beautiful she
begins to look!"

"Yes," Violet said thoughtfully and quietly, "our snow sister does
look very lovely. I did not know, Peony, that we could make such a
sweet little girl as this. Now bring me those light wreaths of snow
from the lower branches of the pear tree. You can climb up on a
snowdrift and reach them. I must have them to make some curls for our
little snow sister's head."

"Here they are, Violet," answered the little boy. "Take care you do
not break them.