Frost, crackling among the trees, laughing to himself, froze the hands of the two quarrelling girls, and they hid their hands in the sleeves of their fur coats and shivered, and went on scolding and jeering at each other.
"Oh, you ugly mug, dirty nose! What sort of a housekeeper will you make?"
"And what about you, boasting one? You know nothing but how to gad about and lick your own face. We'll soon see which of us he'll take."
And the two girls went on wrangling and wrangling till they began to freeze in good earnest.
Suddenly they cried out together,—
"Devil take these bridegrooms for being so long in coming! You have turned blue all over."
And together they replied, shivering,—
"No bluer than yourself, tooth-chatterer."
And Frost, not so far away, crackled and laughed, and leapt from fir tree to fir tree, crackling as he came.
The girls heard that some one was coming through the forest.