Or, perhaps, we would call on each other and talk about the terrible illnesses our poor children were suffering from. Or, perhaps, we would go to market. The market consisted of a long row of raspberry bushes along the meadow fence.
[Illustration: WASHING-DAY AT THE ROCK-HOUSES.]
But when to-morrow, down the lane, I walk among the flowers again, Between the tall red hollyhocks, Here I shall find you as before, Asleep within your fastened door,— My lazy four-o’clocks! MARGARET JOHNSON.
There was skating on the ponds where the snow had been cleared; there were icicles on the trees, nice blue, clear skies in the daytime, cold, bright, wintry moonlight at night.
Lovely weather for Christmas holidays! But to one little five-year-old man, nothing had seemed lovely this Christmas, though he was spending it with his Father and Mother and his big sisters at Grandpapa’s beautiful old country house, where everybody did all that could be done to make Grandpapa’s guests happy. For poor little Roger was pining for his elder brother, Lawson, whom he had not seen for more than four months. Lawson was eight, and had been at school since Michaelmas, and there he had caught a fever which had made it not safe for him to join the rest of the family till the middle of January. But he was coming to-morrow.
Why, then, did Roger still look sad and gloomy?
“Stupid little boy!” said Mabel. “I’m sure we’ve tried to amuse him. Why, Mamma let him sit up an hour later than usual last night, to hear all those funny old fairy tales and legends Uncle Bob was telling.”
“Yes, and weren’t they fun?” answered Pansy. “I did shiver at the witch ones, though, didn’t you?”
Poor little Roger! Pansy’s shivering was nothing to his! They had all walked home from the vicarage, tempted by the clear, frosty moonlight and the hard, dry ground; and trotting along, a little behind the others, a strange thing had happened to the boy. Fancy—in the field by the Primrose Lane, through the gateway, right in a bright band of moonlight, _he had seen a witch_. Just such a witch as Uncle Bob had described—with shadowy garments, and outstretched arms, and a queer-shaped head, on all of which the icicles were sparkling, just as Uncle Bob had said. For it was a winter-witch he had told the story about, whose dwelling was up in the frozen northern seas—“the Snow Witch” they called her.