for, and had reckoned upon all along.

"Mamma! mamma! We have finished our little snow-sister, and she
is running about the garden with us!"

"What imaginative little beings my children are!" thought the
mother, putting the last few stitches into Peony's frock. "And it
is strange, too that they make me almost as much a child as they
themselves are! I can hardly help believing, now, that the
snow-image has really come to life!"

"Dear mamma!" cried Violet, "pray look out and see what a sweet
playmate we have!"

The mother, being thus entreated, could no longer delay to look
forth from the window. The sun was now gone out of the sky,
leaving, however, a rich inheritance of his brightness among
those purple and golden clouds which make the sunsets of winter
so magnificent. But there was not the slightest gleam or dazzle,
either on the window or on the snow; so that the good lady could
look all over the garden, and see everything and everybody in it.
And what do you think she saw there? Violet and Peony, of course,
her own two darling children. Ah, but whom or what did she see
besides? Why, if you will believe me, there was a small figure of
a girl, dressed all in white, with rose-tinged cheeks and
ringlets of golden hue, playing about the garden with the two
children! A stranger though she was, the child seemed to be on as
familiar terms with Violet and Peony, and they with her, as if
all the three had been playmates during the whole of their little
lives. The mother thought to herself that it must certainly be