Kitty remembered how she had run indoors and found Johnnie sitting by the fire in his low crimson chair, his tiny crutch beside him, his paint-box on the little table before him. He was painting a yellow sun, with rays all round it.
It was Johnnie’s delight to paint. He would make stories about his pictures; he told those stories to Kitty only. They were secrets. He kept his pictures in an old tea-chest which their mother had given him, and it had a lock and key. Johnnie kept all his treasures there—all his little treasures, all his little secrets. They were so pretty and so pitiful! They were his tiny pleasures in life. Johnnie was painting “Good Children Land” and “Naughty Children Land.” Good Children Land he painted in beautiful yellow gamboge; Naughty Children Land in black India ink.
Kitty in her bed to-night seemed to see the whole scene, and to hear her own and Johnnie’s voices talking. She had rushed in, and Johnnie had looked up, and he had begun to tell her the story of his picture.
“Look, Kitty!” he had said; “this is the portrait of the naughtiest child, the very, very naughtiest that ever was; and he has come into Good Children Land—by mistake, you know. Look! he has furry legs like a goat, and horns and a tail, just because he is so naughty; but he is going to become good. I will paint him getting good in my next picture.”
Kitty remembered how she had just glanced at the picture; “the naughtiest child that ever was” looked rather like a big blot with a tail, standing in front of the yellow sun. But she had been so full of the thought of the snow-man that she had begun to speak about him at once.
“Oh, Johnnie!” she had said, skipping about first on one foot, then on the other. “The gardener and I have made such a snow-man. He’s as big as the gardener, and ever so much fatter; and he’s got hands, but no legs, only a stump, you know; and we’ve put a pipe into his mouth.”
The Snow-Man.—Page 6.
At this description Johnnie’s eyes had sparkled, and he had cried, “Oh! I wish I could see him!”