“‘O yes—’ said Flocken,—‘it was delicious. I think everything is good that you get for me and that mother cooks. But then you know I can’t eat much.’
“If you had seen her as she lay there—so thin, so white,—you might as soon have suspected a very snowflake of eating much.
“‘So it don’t make much difference,’ repeated little Sneeflocken, ‘what I have; only I do believe, Kline, that I like to have you take so much trouble, and go away up in the snow to get things for me.’ And she put her arms round his neck, and laying her white face against his coarse grey jacket, she stroked and caressed him until Kline thought his heart would burst beneath the weight of that little snowflake.
“‘When the spring comes,’ he said, ‘we will go up the mountain and look for flowers; and I will make you a wreath of violets and fringed pinks, little Flocken.’
“Sneeflocken stroked his face and smiled, and then she looked grave again.
“‘And forget-me-nots, Kline,’ she said softly,—‘you will want them too. The little blue forget-me-nots—they are so like the sky-colour. You will think about me, Kline, whenever you see them, for I shall know what the sky is made of then.—Where’s mother?’
“‘She is cooking your partridge,’ said Kline. ‘Don’t you smell it?’
“‘O yes,’ said the child smiling, ‘and I guess the wolves smell it too. How loud they howl!’
“‘You are not afraid of them?’ said her brother tenderly.