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One afternoon of a cold winter’s day, two children asked leave of their mother to run out and play in the new-fallen snow. The older child was a little girl, so tender and modest that every one called her Violet. The boy was called Peony because of his fat, round face which made everybody think of sunshine and scarlet flowers.

The children lived in the city and had no wider play place than a little garden before the house, divided from the street by a white fence. The pear and plum trees, and the rose bushes in front of the parlor window were covered with white, with here and there an icicle for the fruit. It was a pleasant place to play. Their mother bundled them up in woolen jackets and wadded sacks, and a pair of striped gaiters on each little pair of legs, and worsted mittens on their hands. Out they ran, with a hop-skip-and-jump, into the heart of a huge snowdrift. When they had frosted one another all over with handfuls of snow, Violet had a new idea.

“Let us make an image out of snow,” she said. “It shall be our little sister and shall run about and play with us all winter long!”

“Oh, yes!” cried Peony. “And mother shall see it.”

“Yes,” Violet answered. “Mother shall see the new little girl. But she must not make her come into the warm parlor, for our little snow sister will not love the warmth.”

So the children began this great business of making a snow image that should run about. Violet told Peony what to do, while with her own careful fingers she shaped all the nicer parts of the snow figure. It seemed, in fact, not so much to be made by the children as to grow up under their hands as they were playing and talking about it. Their mother, who was sitting at the window, watched them. The longer she looked, the more and more surprised she grew.

“What remarkable children mine are!” she said to herself. “What other children could have made anything so like a little girl’s figure out of snow at the first trial?”

“Peony, Peony!” cried Violet to her brother, “bring me some of that fresh snow from the farthest corner where we have not been trampling. I want to make our little snow sister’s dress with it. You know it must be white, just as it came out of the sky.”

“Here it is, Violet!” Peony said as he came floundering through the drifts. “Here is the snow for her dress. Oh, Violet, how beautiful she begins to look!”

“Yes,” Violet said thoughtfully and quietly, “our snow sister does look very lovely. I did not know, Peony, that we could make such a sweet little girl as this. Now bring me those light wreaths of snow from the lower branches of the pear tree. You can climb up on a snowdrift and reach them. I must have them to make some curls for our little snow sister’s head.”

“Here they are, Violet,” answered the little boy. “Take care you do not break them. Oh, how pretty!”

“We must have some shining little bits of ice to make the brightness of her eyes. She is not finished yet,” Violet went on.

“Here they are,” cried Peony. “Mother, mother! Look out and see what a nice little girl we have made!”

Their mother put down her work for an instant and looked out of the window. She was dazzled by the sun that had sunk almost to the edge of the world so she could not see the garden very distinctly. Still, through all the brightness of the sun and the snow, she saw a strange, small white figure in the garden. Peony was bringing fresh snow, and Violet was moulding it as a sculptor adds clay to his model.

“They do everything better than other children,” their mother thought. “No wonder they make better snow images.”