up and down the terrace walk at the back of the house--the walk that was
so pleasant in summer, with its pretty view of the lower garden, gay
with the bright, stiffly-arranged flowerbeds, so pleasantly warm and yet
shady with the old trees overhead, where the raven's second cousins, the
rooks, managed their affairs, not without a good deal of chatter about
it, it must be confessed. "Silly creatures," the raven was in the habit
of calling them with contempt--all to himself, of course, for no one
understood the different tones of his croaking, even though he was a
French raven and had received the best of educations. But to-day he was
too depressed in spirit by the cold to think of his relations or their
behaviour at all. He just hopped or hobbled--I hardly know which you
would call it--slowly and solemnly up and down the long walk, where the
snow lay so thick that at each hop it came ever so far up his black
claws, which annoyed him very much, I assure you, and made him wish more
than ever that summer was back again.

Poor old fellow! he was not usually of a discontented disposition; but
to-day, it must be allowed, he was in the right about the cold. It was
_very_ cold.

Several others beside the raven were thinking so--the three chickens who
lived in a queer little house in one corner of the yard thought so, and
huddled the closer together, as they settled themselves for the night.
For though it was only half-past three in the afternoon, they thought it
was no use sitting up any longer on such a make-believe of a day, when
not the least little ray of sunshine had succeeded in creeping through
the leaden-grey sky. And the tortoise _would_ have thought so too if he
could, but he was too sleepy to think at all, as he "cruddled" himself
into his shell in the corner of the laurel hedge, and dreamt of the nice
hot days that were past.