“Oh, yes,” they all said at once, “we had the jolliest time last night putting white dresses on the trees, white spreads over the grasses, white caps on all the fence posts, and making things look so strange that when the children came out in the morning they just shouted and laughed, and soon threw so much snow over each other that they were dressed in white, too, and seemed Snow Fairies like ourselves. They, too, wanted to make curious canes, castles, and other things with the snow as we had done. Sleds were brought out and when the sleighbells commenced their music it seemed that everybody was made glad by our work.”
“Well done,” said King Winter, “now away to your work again.”
In a twinkling the Snow Fairies were up in a purple cloud-boat throwing a shower of snowflake kisses down to King Winter to thank him for giving them work to do.
“Now, Frost Fairies,” said King Winter, turning to a glittering band who wore some of his own jewels, “what have you done to make anybody glad?”
“We have made pictures upon the windows and hung your jewels upon the trees for the people to look at, and covered the skating ponds,” said Jack Frost, the leader.
“That is good,” said King Winter. “You and the Snow Fairies seem to be making the world glad now, but pretty soon we must leave the work, and the good sunbeams will put our things away; they will hide the snowballs, and crack the skating ponds so that the ice may float downstream. Now I would like to make something that will keep long after we are gone away. Queen Summer is gone but her harvest of hay and grain is in the barns. Queen Autumn is gone but her harvest of apples and potatoes is in the cellars; now I want to leave a harvest, too.”
“But the sunbeams are away most of the time now,” said Jack Frost. “Can anything grow without them?”
“My harvest will grow best without them,” said King Winter, “and I’ll just hang up a thick cloud curtain and ask them to play upon the other side while my harvest grows. Mr. North Wind will help, and if all you Frost Fairies do your liveliest work my harvest will soon be ready.”
North Wind soon came with bags of cold air which he scattered hither and thither, while the Frost Fairies carried it into every track and corner, wondering all the while what the harvest would be. But after two days’ work they found out; for horses were hitched to sleds and men started for the lakes and rivers, saying, “The ice has frozen so thick that it is a fine time to fill the ice-houses.” Saws and poles were carried along, and soon huge blocks of ice were finding places upon the sleds ready for a ride to some ice-house where they would be packed so securely in sawdust that King Winter’s harvest would keep through the very hottest weather.
“Then the ice-men can play that they are we,” said a Frost Fairy, “scattering cold all about to make people glad.”