“You ought to have called me,” said Mrs. Owen.
“But it was such fun sweeping it up and throwing it out of the window. We can’t throw dust out of the window.”
When Peggy waked in the morning, the air was thick with snowflakes, and everything was heaped and piled high with snow. It seemed as if it would be impossible to get out to feed the hens, for not only was it very deep, but it was drifting with the wind.
“It is a real blizzard,” said Mrs. Owen. “It is the worst storm we have had yet.”
“Oh, there is no going to school to-day, mother,” Alice said, dancing about the room in glee.
It was not often that Alice danced. She was a quiet child. Peggy caught Alice by the waist, and they both danced together, and then they each took one of Diana’s hands and they all three danced in a strange dance that they made up as they went along. It was full of bobbing curtsies and racing and scampering about the room. They ended by coming up to Mrs. Owen and making more curtsies, just the number that Alice was years old.
“Madam, it is your daughter’s birthday,” said Peggy. “Madam, the Frost King has decided to celebrate it by his best blizzard. He has planned it so we can’t go to school, and so Diana can make us a longer visit. All hail to the Frost King!”
“I wish the Frost King had planned it so we could get our milk this morning,” said Mrs. Owen; “he didn’t tell me he was planning the blizzard, and now I haven’t a bit of milk in the house.”
“The Frost King says the water is all right for drinking,” said Peggy. “He says it is so cold it doesn’t have to be put on ice.”
The children had a merry time eating their breakfast, although even Peggy’s fertile imagination could think of no way by which the Frost King could make oatmeal taste well without milk.