reakfast that he did not reply at
once. Peter noticed that he did not hop, but walked or ran. Presently he
paused long enough to reply to Peter's question. "If the snow has come
to stay all winter, perhaps I'll stay," said he.

"What has the snow to do with it?" demanded Peter.

"Only that I like the snow and I like cold weather. When the snow
begins to disappear, I just naturally fly back farther north," replied
Snowflake. "It isn't that I don't like bare ground, because I do, and
I'm always glad when the snow is blown off in places so that I can hunt
for seeds on the ground. But when the snow begins to melt everywhere I
feel uneasy. I can't understand how folks can be contented where there
is no snow and ice. You don't catch me going 'way down south. No, siree,
you don't catch me going 'way down south. Why, when the nesting season
comes around, I chase Jack Frost clear 'way up to where he spends the
summer. I nest 'way up on the shore of the Polar Sea, but of course you
don't know where that is, Peter Rabbit."

"If you are so fond of the cold in the Far North, the snow and the ice,
what did you come south at all for? Why don't you stay up there all the
year around?" demanded Peter.

"Because, Peter," replied Snowflake, twittering merrily, "like everybody
else, I have to eat in order to live. When you see me down here you may
know that the snows up north are so deep that they have covered all the
seeds. I always keep a weather eye out, as the saying is, and the minute
it looks as if there would be too much snow for me to get a living, I
move along. I hope I will not have to go any farther than this, but if
some morning you wake up and find the snow so deep that all the heads of
the weeds are buried, don't expect to find me."

"That's what I call good, sound common sense," said another voice, and
a bird a little bigger than Snowflake, and who at first glance seemed to
be dressed almost wholly in soft chocolate brown, alighted in the snow
close by and at once began to run about in search of seeds. It was
Wanderer the Horned Lark. Peter hailed him joyously, for there was
something of mystery about Wanderer, and Peter, as you know, loves
mystery.

Peter had known him ever since his first winter, yet did not feel
really acquainted, for Wanderer seldom stayed long enough for a real
acquaintance. Every winter he would come, sometimes two or three times,
but seldom staying more than a few days at a time. Quite often he a