a thick fall of snow. Yet she saw the snow melt again and the leaves
break forth, and at last she saw the first pale-green spires shoot up
out of the bed of lilies.

But the longest life must end at last, the best little boys will
sometimes be disobedient.

It appears strange to put these things together; but if they had
anything to do with one another, Peter did not know it.

He knew and felt one day that he had been a naughty boy, very naughty,
for in fact he had got down into the garden, but he also knew that he
had not found the top he went to look for, and that his grandmother had
taken from him what he did find.

This punishment he deserved; he had it and no other. It came about in
this wise.

It was a sweet April day, almost the last of the month. All the
cherry-trees were in full flower; the pear-trees were coming out, and
the young thickets in the garden were bending low with lilac-blossom,
but Peter was miserable.

He was leaning his arms over the balustrade, and the great red peonies
and loose anemones were staring up at him so that he could see down into
their central folds; but what is April, and what is a half-holiday, and
what indeed is life itself when one has lost perhaps the most excellent
top that boy ever spun, and the loudest hummer? And then he had taken
such care of it. Never but once, only this once, had he spun it in the
gallery at all, and yet this once of all misfortunes it had rolled its