ost's skinning me alive. Well, if
our bridegroom[281] doesn't come quick, we shall be frozen to
death here!"

"Don't go talking nonsense, Mashka; as if suitors[282] generally
turned up in the forenoon. Why it's hardly dinner-time
yet!"

"But I say, Prascovia! if only one comes, which of us will
he take?"

"Not you, you stupid goose!"

"Then it will be you, I suppose!"

"Of course it will be me!"

"You, indeed! there now, have done talking stuff and
treating people like fools!"

Meanwhile, Frost had numbed the girl's hands, so our
damsels folded them under their dress, and then went on
quarrelling as before.

"What, you fright! you sleepy-face! you abominable shrew!
why, you don't know so much as how to begin weaving: and as
to going on with it, you haven't an idea!"

"Aha, boaster! and what is it you know? Why, nothing at
all except to go out to merry-makings and lick your lips there.
We'll soon see which he'll take first!"

While the girls went on scolding like that, they began to
freeze in downright earnest. Suddenly they both cried out at
once:

"Whyever is he so long coming. Do you know, you've turned
quite blue!"

Now, a good way off, Frost had begun cracking, snapping
his fingers, and leaping from fir to fir. To the girls it sounded
as if some one was coming.

"Listen, Prascovia! He's coming at last, and with bells,
too!"

"Get along with you! I won't listen; my skin is peeling
with cold."

"And yet you're still expecting to get married!"

Then they began blowing on their fingers.

Nearer and nearer came Frost. At length he appeared on
the pine, above the heads of the girls, and said to them:

"Are ye warm, maidens? Are ye warm, pretty ones? Are
ye warm, my darlings?"

"Oh, Frost, it's awfully cold! we're utterly perished!
We're expecting a bridegroom, but the confounded fellow has
disappeared."

Frost slid lower down the tree, cracked away more, snapped
his fingers oftener than before.

"Are ye warm, maidens? Are ye warm, pretty ones?"

"Get along with you! Are you blind that you can't see our
hands and feet are quite dead?"

Still lower descended Frost, still more put forth his might,[283]
and said:

"Are ye warm, maidens?"

"Into the bottomless pit with you! Out of sight, accursed
one!" cried the girls--and became lifeless forms.[284]

Next morning the old woman sai