But the flower shuddered at his kiss, and the transparent dewdrop that hung from its petal froze to ice at the instant.
Again and again Winter ran through the wood. When he breathed on them, the leaves turned yellow and the earth grew hard.
Even the anemones, who lay below in the earth waiting till my Lady Spring should come back as she had promised, they too felt his breath and shuddered down in their roots.
"Ugh! how cold it is!" they said to one another. "How shall we stand the winter? We shall die for a certainty before it is over."
"Now it's my time," said Winter. "Now I need no longer steal about like a thief in the night. After to-day I shall look everybody in the face, and bite their noses, and make their eyes run with water."
At night he let loose the storm. "Let me see you make a clean sweep," he said. And the storm obeyed his command. He went howling through the wood, and shook the branches till they creaked and cracked. Any that were rotten broke off, and those that held on had to turn and bow this way and that.
"Away with that finery!" howled the storm as he tore off the leaves. "This is not the time to dress yourself up. The snow will soon be coming on to your branches; that will be quite another story."
All the leaves fell in terror to the earth, but the storm would not let them rest. He seized them round the waist and waltzed with them out over the field, high up into the air, and into the wood again, swept them into great heaps, and then scattered them in all directions—just as it pleased him.