“We’ll soon be coming to the Dog Star,” Nimbus told Billy. “His name is Sirius, but he isn’t. He’s almost eight million years old, but he still behaves like a Puppy Star at the snow-making season. He worries the Snow Fairies half to death.”
“What are Snow Fairies?” asked Billy.
“They are the people that make the snow. Didn’t you ever hear the proverb, ‘Make snow while the moon shines’?”
Billy wasn’t quite sure. He had heard one very much like that, though, about hay, and he wondered if they made snow in fields and left it out to dry in the moonshine.
“Yes,” said Nimbus, although Billy had not spoken, “it is very much the same. The snowflakes grow on the little stalks that shoot up from the clouds, and the Snow Fairies harvest them and dry them in the moonlight. Then they sift it down on the land and sea, whenever Jack Frost says the little boys and girls are tired of nutting and making autumn-leaf bonfires, and want to coast and throw snowballs.”
“Do they make hail that way, too?” asked Billy.
“Oh! gracious, no. They break the hail off the rain clouds with their hammers, and it freezes on the way down. They soon tire of that, though, so they never keep it up long. That is why you hear people say ‘Hail and Farewell.’ You have to say good-by to a hailstorm almost before you’ve had time to say hello to it.”
“I think it is very ill-mannered of the Dog Star to worry them,” said Billy.
“Oh, Dog Stars have no manners. That is very well shown in the poem I wrote about the Dog Star. Did you ever happen to hear it?”
“No,” said Billy. “I never did.”