like another sort of life, this new arrangement of stealing about the
house in the silent hours before daybreak. Susy thought she should like
to sit up all night, and sleep all day, if the mayor would only hush the
streets; it would be so odd!

"O, how dark the clouds are!" said Prudy, peeping out of the window; "it
_fogs_ so I can't see a single thing. Susy, I'm going to keep _at watch_
of the sky. Don't you s'pose, though, 'twill be Christmas all the same,
if there's a snow storm?"

"There's been snow," said Susy, "all in the night. Look down at the
pavement. Don't you wish that was frosted cake?"

"O, the snow came in the night, so not to wake us up," cried Prudy,
clapping her hands; "but it wouldn't have waked us, you know, even in
the night, for it came so still."

"But why don't the clouds go off?" she added, sadly.

"I don't know," replied Susy; "perhaps they are waiting till the sun
comes and smiles them away."

Such happy children as these were, as they sat peeping out of the window
at the dull gray sky!

They did not know that a great mischief was begun that morning--a
mischief which was no larger yet than "a midge's wing." They were
watching the clouds for a snow storm; but they never dreamed of such
things as clouds of _trouble_, which grow darker and darker, and which
even the beautiful Christmas sun cannot "smile away."