"He's very ugly now, I think; see how he's melted all along his shoulder, and his hair has got out of curl, and his nose is awful," pronounced Susan Sunflower. "Let's pull him to pieces and make a nicer man."
"Oh, oh!" groaned Snowy Peter, with a final effort of consciousness. His inward sufferings did not affect his features in the least, and no one suspected that he was feeling anything. Paul knocked the pipe out of his mouth with a snow-ball. Harry, with a great push, rolled him over. The crisp snow parted and flew, the children hurrahed; in three minutes he was a shapeless mass, and nobody ever knew or guessed how for a few brief hours he had lived the life of a human being, been agitated by hope and moved by desire. So ended Snowy Peter; and his sole mourner was little Susan, who remarked, "After all, he was nice before he got spoiled, and I wish Nursey had seen him."
[THE DO SOMETHING SOCIETY.]
CLATTER, clatter, went a sewing-machine in an upstairs room, as the busy mamma of the Newcombe children bent over it, guiding the long breadths beneath the clicking needle, her eyes fixed on its glancing point, but her thoughts very far away, after the fashion of mammas who work on sewing-machines. The slam of a door, and the sound of quick feet in the entry below, arrested her attention.
"That is Catherine, of course," she said to herself. "None of the other children bang the door in just that particular way."
The top of a rapidly ascending red hat, with a pigtail of fair hair hanging beneath it, became visible, as Mrs. Newcombe glanced across to the staircase. It was Catherine. Another moment, and she burst into the room.
"Mamma, mamma, where are you? Oh, mamma, we girls have invented a society, and we are all going to belong to it."
"Who is 'all,' and what sort of a society is it?" demanded Mrs. Newcombe, by no means suspending her machine work.