His favourite amusement was to come jumping down into some nice garden where the flowers were still blooming at the end of the autumn and pinch all their beautiful heads until they died. Sometimes, too, he would pinch the birds’ toes, and sometimes, in the winter, he was so cruel as to kill the poor little things outright. He had a heart as hard as a stone, and the more wickedness he could do, the better he was pleased. The birds hated him, and the squirrels hated him, and the gardeners hated him, and no wonder, too.
One day he sat on the moon in a very terrible humour thinking of all the bad things he meant to do; and he took a great jump and came down on a weathercock which was fixed on the top of the larch-tree near a big stone house standing in a garden. Inside the house a little boy in his night-shirt stood at a window; the curtains were closed behind him in the warm room, but he had got out of bed to admire the stars which were bright overhead. He saw Jack Frost swinging about on the weathercock and he did not know who he was.
“Nurse!” he cried, “come and look at the funny little man who is sitting all by himself on the weathercock!”
“Nonsense!” said the nurse. “How can a man sit on the weathercock? Get back into bed this minute or you will have a cold in the morning and I shall be obliged to give you nasty medicine.”
“But come! come!” he cried again.
The nurse went to the window and looked out, and, just as she did so, Jack Frost jumped off the weathercock into a holly tree.
“There! did you see that?” shouted the little boy, clapping his hands.
The nurse saw it very well but she could not account for it, so she pretended it had not happened.