The sun was shining brilliantly on the glistening snow, and when they had finished dinner Mrs. Abbott told them to prepare for a snow frolic in the inclosure, saying she had ordered their snow-shovels and rubber boots brought to the back piazza in readiness for them.
Edward had shoveled paths to the back and front gate, and, seeing the wall of ice and snow through which he had cut, Bell exclaimed, “Who’s for building a snow-fort?”
Most of them hailed the idea jubilantly, but Delia and Katie had just been reading Hawthorne’s lovely “Snow Image,” and suggested molding a beautiful white child.
“Perfectly sweet!” said Lily. “How nice in you to think of it! Where shall we build her?”
“I should think she ought to be standing in the grove; she will look shadowy and fairy-like under the trees with evergreens behind her.”
“This is nice kind of snow, it packs well,” said Lida Evertson; “but how can we make a girl?”
“Easy enough,” said Katie. “We made General Washington once, and put a paper cocked hat on him. He was fine, only we got his feet longer than his legs.”
“Let’s get the book and see how a snow-girl ought to look,” suggested Lily.
A look at the graceful, humanized snow image showed the manifest impossibility of imitating it successfully.
“But even if we cannot make a willowy fairy like that,” said Lily, “we can make something. If a woman made a charming face in butter—Iolanthe, she called it, didn’t she?—I think we ought to be able to work up something nice in snow.”