r, kiss me!" cried Peony.

"There! she has kissed you," added Violet, "and now her lips are very
red. And she blushed a little, too!"

"Oh, what a cold kiss!" cried Peony.

Just then, there came a breeze of the pure west-wind, sweeping through
the garden and rattling the parlor-windows. It sounded so wintry cold,
that the mother was about to tap on the window-pane with her thimbled
finger, to summon the two children in, when they both cried out to her
with one voice. The tone was not a tone of surprise, although they were
evidently a good deal excited; it appeared rather as if they were very
much rejoiced at some event that had now happened, but which they had
been looking for, and had reckoned upon all along.

"Mamma! mamma! We have finished our little snow-sister, and she is
running about the garden with us!"

"What imaginative little beings my children are!" thought the mother,
putting the last few stitches into Peony's frock. "And it is strange,
too that they make me almost as much a child as they themselves are! I
can hardly help believing, now, that the snow-image has really come to
life!"

"Dear mamma!" cried Violet, "pray look out and see what a sweet
playmate we have!"

The mother, being thus entreated, could no longer delay to look forth
from the window. The sun was now gone out of the sky, leaving, however,
a rich inheritance of his brightness among those purple and golden
clouds which make the sunsets of winter so magnificent. But there was
not the slightest gleam or dazzle, either on the window or on the snow;
so that the good lady could look all over the garden, and see
everything and everybody in it. And what do you think she saw there?
Violet and Peony, of course, her own two darling children. Ah, but whom
or what did she see besides? Why, if you will believe me, there was a
small figure of a girl, dressed all in white, with rose-tinged cheeks
and ringlets of golden hue, playing about the garden with the two
children! A stranger though she was, the child seemed to be on as
familiar terms with Violet and Peony, and they with her, as if all the
three had been playmates during the whole of their little lives. The
mother thought to herself that it must certainly be the daughter of one
of the neighbors, and that, seeing Violet and Peony in the garden, the
child had run across the street to play with them. So this kind lady
went to the door, intending to invite the little runaway into her
comfortable