All around he spread the white frost, and when at last he finished his work the old Sun Man, looking over the crest of the hill, was horrified when he looked upon a white world.
"You rascal!" he shouted after Jack Frost's flying shape. "You are far too early! You have spoiled all your pictures for this year!"
"Old silly, what does he know?" said Jack as he hurried along. "He is just like mother—old-fashioned."
Jack got softly into bed, and not until his mother called him did he awake again.
"Come," she said one day, "it is time now for you to be about your work, and your pictures should be gorgeous in their colorings this year. Be careful, my son; scatter your frost to-night lightly, and again to-morrow night. I will go out in the morning and see how things look."
Jack Frost did not tell his mother he had been out before. He did not need to tell her, for the next morning before old Madam North Wind had gone far she knew what had happened. "They are all spoiled," she said as she looked over the landscape; "all black and dead before they had a bit of color."
"Come out and look at your work," she said, going back for her son. "You thought you knew more about it than your old mother."
Jack Frost had no idea what old Madam North Wind meant, but he felt sure something was wrong, so he followed his mother very meekly; but when they reached the forest he knew something was wrong indeed.
No bright and beautifully-colored leaves and bushes met his gaze. All were brown and black. "What is the matter with my pictures?" he asked. "I thought they would be very beautiful this year."
"You stole out before it was time, and you not only surprised the farmers, but you spoiled all your gorgeous pictures and cheated all the people who look for them. There will be none this year because you thought you knew more than I. Go home. There is no work for you, and perhaps you will listen to me next year and not get up until I call you."