Now I did not think it necessary to say that the snow in the Garden
was of powdered sugar, as it is in all well-informed stories; but
beyond the hedge, as far as the eye could reach (and Sara had quite a
long eye for her age--her mother was kept busy letting out hems) the
snow was of powdered silver. I am sorry to say it was not good to eat
at all; but it was so much more beautiful than the common garden kind
that I do not believe you would have minded, any more than Sara did.
It was, of course, fairy snow, while the other was just the plain
imaginary kind.

But the scene before her was so strange and animated that even the
snow could not hold Sara's attention for long. (It was slippery, for
one thing; and, besides, the crust was thin, and Sara's attention was
so excited and skippy that it was continually breaking through.)

Beyond Avrillia's house on one side, in the direction Sara had gone
with Pirlaps to see his relations, was a long, delightful hill; and
there all the seventy children were coasting and snowballing. Every
one of them had on a cap that seemed to be made of a tiny red pepper,
and their little mittened fists looked exactly like holly-berries.
Their sleds were of curled rose-petals, and Sara knew without being
told that it had cost their mother quite a struggle to spare so many
from the supply she had collected to write poems on. Sara had watched
them for several minutes before she noticed that they always coasted
uphill and dragged their sleds down. And all the time the air flashed
with snowballs so big that they looked like the tantalizing silver
balls which sometimes occur in the nicest boxes of chocolates.

It was some time before Sara could disengage her attention (it had