But how the children wished their mother were waiting for them in the
little house to hear the tale!




CHAPTER XIII

NORA'S GRANDCHILDREN


One afternoon Eric and Ivra started out for the Forest Children's moss
village to play with them. But when they got there they found all the
little houses deserted: not a Forest Child was to be found. They must
have gone into some other part of the forest to play. So Ivra and Eric
wandered on and on, a little lonely, a little tired of just each other
for comrades, till at last they came to the very edge of the
forest,--and there was Nora's farm, a rambling red brick house, with a
barn twice its size behind it. Down in the pasture by the house half a
dozen Snow Witches were dancing in a circle, now near, now far, all over
the pasture, and sometimes right up to the farm-house windows.

Ivra clapped her hands and bounded forward. Eric did not follow. He
stood to watch. When the Snow Witches saw Ivra running to them they
rushed to meet her. For a minute she was lost in a cloud of blown snow,
and then there she was dancing in their circle back and forth across the
pasture, and then away, away, away! But before she frolicked quite out
of sight she turned to look for her playfellow, and beckoned to him.