heart, even though they meant nothing so very wise or wonderful,
after all!

But you must know a mother listens with her heart much more than
with her ears; and thus she is often delighted with the trills of
celestial music, when other people can hear nothing of the kind.

"Peony, Peony!" cried Violet to her brother, who had gone to
another part of the garden, "bring me some of that fresh snow,
Peony, from the very farthest corner, where we have not been
trampling. I want it to shape our little snow-sister's bosom
with. You know that part must be quite pure, just as it came out
of the sky!"

"Here it is, Violet!" answered Peony, in his bluff tone,--but a
very sweet tone, too,--as he came floundering through the
half-trodden drifts. "Here is the snow for her little bosom. O
Violet, how beau-ti-ful she begins to look!"

"Yes," said Violet, thoughtfully and quietly; "our snow-sister
does look very lovely. I did not quite know, Peony, that we could
make such a sweet little girl as this."

The mother, as she listened, thought how fit and delightful an
incident it would be, if fairies, or still better, if
angel-children were to come from paradise, and play invisibly
with her own darlings, and help them to make their snow-image,
giving it the features of celestial babyhood! Violet and Peony
would not be aware of their immortal playmates,--only they would
see that the image grew very beautiful while they worked at it,