The snow-storm lasted another day; but what became of it afterwards, I
cannot possibly imagine. At any rate, it entirely cleared away during
the night; and when the sun arose the next morning, it shone brightly
down on as bleak a tract of hill-country here in Berkshire, as could
be seen anywhere in the world. The frost-work had so covered the
window-panes that it was hardly possible to get a glimpse at the
scenery outside. But, while waiting for breakfast, the small populace
of Tanglewood had scratched peep-holes with their finger-nails, and
saw with vast delight that--unless it were one or two bare patches on
a precipitous hill-side, or the gray effect of the snow, intermingled
with the black pine forest--all nature was as white as a sheet. How
exceedingly pleasant! And, to make it all the better, it was cold
enough to nip one's nose short off! If people have but life enough in
them to bear it, there is nothing that so raises the spirits, and
makes the blood ripple and dance so nimbly, like a brook down the
slope of a hill, as a bright, hard frost.
No sooner was breakfast over, than the whole party, well muffled in
furs and woolens, floundered forth into the midst of the snow. Well,
what a day of frosty sport was this! They slid down hill into the
valley, a hundred times, nobody knows how far; and, to make it all the
merrier, upsetting their sledges, and tumbling head over heels, quite
as often as they came safely to the bottom. And, once, Eustace Bright
took Periwinkle, Sweet Fern, and Squash-Blossom, on the sledge with
him, by way of insuring a safe passage; and down they went, full
speed. But, behold, halfway down, the sledge hit against a hidden
stump, and flung all four of its passengers into a heap; and, on
gathering themselves up, there was no little Squash-Blossom to be
found! Why, what could have become of the child? And while they were
wondering and staring about, up started Squash-Blossom out of a
snow-bank, with the reddest face you ever saw, and looking as if a
large scarlet flower had suddenly sprouted up in midwinter. Then there
was a great laugh.
When they had grown tired of sliding down hill, Eustace set the
children to digging a cave in the biggest snow-drift that they could
find. Unluckily, just as it was completed, and the party had squeezed
themselves into the hollow, down came the roof upon their heads, and
buried every soul of them alive! The next moment, up popped all their
little heads out of the ruins, and the tall student's head in the
midst of them, looking hoary and venerable with the snow-dust that had
got amongst his brown curls. And then, to punish Cousin Eustace for
advising them to dig such a tumble-down cavern, the children attacked
him in a body, and so bepelted him with snowballs that he was fain to
take to his heels.
So he ran away, and went into the woods, and thence to the margin of
Shadow Brook, where he could hear the streamlet grumbling along, under
great overhanging banks of snow and ice, which would scarcely let it
see the light of day. There were adamantine icicles glittering around
all its little cascades. Thence he strolled to the shore of the lake,
and beheld a white, untrodden plain before him, stretching from his
own feet to the foot of Monument Mountain. And, it being now almost
sunset, Eustace thought that he had never beheld anything so fresh and
beautiful as the scene. He was glad that the children were not with
him; for their lively spirits and tumble-about activity would quite
have chased away his higher and graver mood, so that he would merely
have been merry (as he had already been, the whole day long), and
would not have known the loveliness of the winter sunset among the
hills.
When the sun was fairly down, our friend Eustace went home to eat his
supper. After the meal was over, he betook himself to the study with a
purpose, I rather imagine, to write an ode, or two or three sonnets,
or verses of some kind or other, in praise of the purple and golden
clouds which he had seen around the setting sun. But, before he had
hammered out the very first rhyme, the door opened, and Primrose and
Periwinkle made their appearance.
"Go away, children! I can't be troubled with you now!" cried the
student, looking over his shoulder, with the pen between his fingers.
"What in the world do you want here? I thought you were all in bed!"
"Hear him, Periwinkle, trying to talk like a grown man!" said
Primrose. "And he seems to forget that I am now thirteen years old,
and may sit up almost as late as I please. But, Cousin Eustace, you
must put off your airs, and come with us to the drawing-room. The
children have talked so much about your stories, that my father wishes
to hear one of them, in order to judge whether they are likely to do
any mischief."
"Poh, poh, Primrose!" exclaimed the student, rather vexed. "I don't
believe I can tell one of my stories in the presence of grown people.
Besides, your father is a classical scholar; not that I am much afraid
of his scholarship, neither, for I doubt not it is as rusty as an old
case-knife by this time. But then he will be sure to quarrel with the
admirable nonsense that I put into these stories, out of my own head,
and which makes the great charm of the matter for children, like
yourself. No man of fifty, who has read the classical myths in his
youth, can possibly understand my merit as a reinventor and improver
of them."
"All this may be very true," said Primrose, "but come you must! My
father will not open his book, nor will mamma open the piano, till
you have given us some of your nonsense, as you very correctly call
it. So be a good boy, and come along."
Whatever he might pretend, the student was rather glad than otherwise,
on second thoughts, to catch at the opportunity of proving to Mr.
Pringle what an excellent faculty he had in modernizing the myths of
ancient times. Until twenty years of age, a young man may, indeed, be
rather bashful about showing his poetry and his prose; but, for all
that, he is pretty apt to think that these very productions would
place him at the tiptop of literature, if once they could be known.
Accordingly, without much more resistance, Eustace suffered Primrose
and Periwinkle to drag him into the drawing-room.
It was a large, handsome apartment, with a semi-circular window at one
end, in the recess of which stood a marble copy of Greenough's Angel
and Child. On one side of the fireplace there were many shelves of
books, gravely but richly bound. The white light of the astral-lamp,
and the red glow of the bright coal-fire, made the room brilliant and
cheerful; and before the fire, in a deep arm-chair, sat Mr. Pringle,
looking just fit to be seated in such a chair, and in such a room. He
was a tall and quite a handsome gentleman, with a bald brow; and was
always so nicely dressed, that even Eustace Bright never liked to
enter his presence without at least pausing at the threshold to settle
his shirt-collar. But now, as Primrose had hold of one of his hands,
and Periwinkle of the other, he was forced to make his appearance
with a rough-and-tumble sort of look, as if he had been rolling all
day in a snow-bank. And so he had.
Mr. Pringle turned towards the student benignly enough, but in a way
that made him feel how uncombed and unbrushed he was, and how uncombed
and unbrushed, likewise, were his mind and thoughts.
"Eustace," said Mr. Pringle, with a smile, "I find that you are
producing a great sensation among the little public of Tanglewood, by
the exercise of your gifts of narrative. Primrose here, as the little
folks choose to call her, and the rest of the children, have been so
loud in praise of your stories, that Mrs. Pringle and myself are
really curious to hear a specimen. It would be so much the more
gratifying to myself, as the stories appear to be an attempt to render
the fables of classical antiquity into the idiom of modern fancy and
feeling. At least, so I judge from a few of the incidents which have
come to me at second hand."
"You are not exactly the auditor that I should have chosen, sir,"
observed the student, "for fantasies of this nature."
"Possibly not," replied Mr. Pringle. "I suspect, however, that a young
author's most useful critic is precisely the one whom he would be
least apt to choose. Pray oblige me, therefore."
"Sympathy, methinks, should have some little share in the critic's
qualifications," murmured Eustace Bright. "However, sir, if you will
find patience, I will find stories. But be kind enough to remember
that I am addressing myself to the imagination and sympathies of the
children, not to your own."
Accordingly, the student snatched hold of the first theme which
presented itself. It was suggested by a plate of apples that he
happened to spy on the mantel-piece.
[Illustration]