LITTLE PUSSY WILLOW.
New England winter.
By and by the sun took to getting up later and later, setting a dreadfully bad example, it is to be confessed. It would be seven o’clock and after before he would show his red face above the bed-clothes of clouds away off in the southeast; and when he did manage to get up, he was so far off and so chilly in his demeanor that people seemed scarcely a bit the better for him; and by half-past four in the afternoon he was down in bed again, tucked up for the night, never caring what became of the world. And so the clouds were full of snow, as if a thousand white feather-beds had been ripped up over the world; and all the frisky winds came out of their dens, and great frolics they had, blowing and roaring and careering in the clouds,—now bellowing down between the mountains, as if they meant to tear the world to pieces, then piping high and shrill, first round one corner of the farmhouse, and then round the other, rattling the windows, bouncing against the doors, and then with one united chorus rumbling, tumbling down the great chimney, as if they had a mind to upset it. Oh, what a frisky, rough, jolly, unmannerly set of winds they were! By and by the snow drifted higher than the fences, and nothing was to be seen around the farmhouse but smooth, waving hills and hollows of snow; and then came the rain and sleet, and froze them over with a slippery, shining crust, that looked as if the earth was dressed for the winter in a silver coat of mail.