At last she said, “I know what I will do! I’ll make a Great Snowball, like the Great Sausage in my German picture book.”
So the little girl set to work, and rolled and patted and pressed till she had a well-shaped ball to begin with. Then she laid it on the smooth snow table-cloth of the lawn, and began to roll it in good earnest, here and there, over and over and over.
The snow was in perfect condition, soft and moist; every particle clung to the ball, which grew bigger and bigger and BIGGER and BIGGER!
At last Rita’s arms were tired, and she stopped to rest and to look about her. She was at the end of the lawn, where the bank sloped up to the stone wall. How nice it would be if she could roll the Great Snowball up the bank, and push it to the top of the wall!
Then Papa would see it when he came home to dinner, and he would be so ’stonished! he would say, “Who—upon—yerth—put that great, hugeous snowball there?” And Rita would say, “I did, Pappy! just ’cisely all my own pitickiler self.”
And then Papa would say, “Why-ee! what a great, big girl my Rita is! I must take her to town to-morrow-day, and buy her a muff, and a doll with wink eyes, and a squeaky dog, and a prayer-book, and a nalbum, and big boots, and a gold watch and a stick of striped candy! and then—” But by this time Rita was quite ready to go to work again.
The snowball was very big by this time, quite as big as she was; and the bank, though not high, was very steep. But Rita’s short arms were sturdy, and her courage knew no measure; so at it she went, pushing the great ball up, inch by inch; puffing, panting, her cheeks growing redder and redder, but with no thought of giving up.
Now, by this time the snowball began to have its own ideas. Just at what point of bigness a snowball begins to have a mind of its own I cannot tell you, so you must ask some one wiser than I; but this snowball had reached the point.
At this moment it was saying to itself, “What fun this child is having! but I do not enjoy it at all. It is the pushing that is the fun, apparently. Why should not I push the child? I am bigger than she; it would be very pleasant to roll down the bank, and push her before me. I might try! I think I will! There!”