shone bright and warm. As to
the poor ducks, they could do nothing but paddle and straddle about over
the surface of the glassy pond, for almost as soon as the hard ice was
broken for them to get water, it all froze together again; and in spite
of their thick coats of warm down and feathers, they said it was almost
too cold to be borne. The rooks had gone down to the sea-side and the
mouths of the rivers to pick up a living when the tide went down; while
all the other birds that were not in the fields made friends with the
sparrows, and went in flocks to the farmyards, where they could find
stray grains of corn, and run off with them, chased by the old cocks and
hens. And still Jack Frost had it all his own way, and stuck his cold,
sharp teeth into everything and everybody--even into the foreign
thrushes and grey crows that came over from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark,
and nipped them so that they all said they had better have stayed at
home.

Now, all this could not have been borne, only that Jack Frost would go
to sleep sometimes, and then down would come a soft, warm rain that
would wash away the snow and melt the ice, and soften the ground so that
food became plentiful again; and the birds would set to and make up for
lost time by having such a feast as would make them better able to bear
Jack Frost's next fast, and strong enough to set his sharp teeth at
defiance.

They were fine times for feasting when the thaw had set in, for then, as
the earth grew soft, the worms would come crawling out to have a
stretch, after being asleep beneath the iron-bound earth. As for the
rooks, they ate until they could hardly move, and gormandised in a way
that could only be excused in things that could not get their meals at
regular times. "Snip-snap" went the bills all over the marshlands, and
gobble-gobble went the poor worms; and so for about a week the birds had
such a feast that their skins all got quite tight with the thick jacket
of fat that was spread beneath them to keep the cold out, and all their
feathers began to stick up so that they had plenty of work to smooth
them down. But such weather did not last long, for soon Jack Frost
would wake up again, quite cross to think how long he had slept, and
then on he would put his sharp steel skates again, and away over the
country he would skim with all the land turning to iron wherever he
went, and looking as if the keen old fellow had been sprinkling diamonds
and emerald