THE FIRST SNOWSTORM
Sally sat at the window watching her first snowstorm. She was entranced
by the way the flakes fell. They came down so softly, flying through
the air like tiny white butterflies, and when they reached the earth,
they all joined together in a wonderful white blanket.
‘Oxford,’ she said, ‘isn’t this a beautiful world? Doesn’t it seem as
if millions of tiny white butterflies were coming down to cover the
earth with a white blanket?’
‘It looks more like powder to me, or rice,’ said Oxford. ‘I don’t see
anything pretty about it. It’s just frozen rain.’
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It was when her brother said things like this that Sally longed
to have children who might perhaps be like her and understand how
truly beautiful this wonderful world is. She did so wish that her
great-grandfather was alive, for she was sure he would be a satisfying
companion. He was a poet, and Elvira had sometimes read some of his
verses aloud. They had been published in a book, and there were
others that had never been printed. She longed to ask Elvira if her
great-grandfather, William Furbush-Tailby, had ever written a poem
about a snowstorm, but, although Elvira was unusually intelligent, for
a person, Sally could not always make her thought-transference language
understood. This time, however, it seemed to work, for Elvira took a
book with writing in it out of a drawer in the cupboard and she said to
Miss Harvey, ‘Did I ever read you Billy Furbush-Tailby’s poem on “The
First Snowstorm of the Season”?’
Sally pricked up her ears, but Oxford Gray, Junior, went off to sleep,
for verses bored him.
They fall so softly from the sky,
All coming down together;
Why did they leave the regions high
To give us stormy weather?
Did they take pity on the earth
That looked so bare and brown,
As if it needed a new birth,
And so came fluttering down?
Did they remember children small,
Who longed to slide and coast,
And so came down with a great fall
In a glad, joyous host?
I watch the people as they pass
And snowflakes as they fall,
I watch the puddle that’s like glass,
I’m glad that I am small.
For it is cozy in the house,
Beside the kitchen stove,
Watching to get a gliding mouse
While my three brothers rove,
And scamper through the falling flakes,
No thought of verse have they,
While kind Elvira brews and bakes,
Upon this snowy day,
Dishes that cats and kittens love,
They are a pleasant sight;
I let my brothers freely rove,
I stay at home and write.
Sally was much impressed by the verses of her ancestor. She wished he
were here now, sitting by her on the window-sill, for Oxford Gray,
Junior, was so tiresome at times. ‘Rice, indeed, or powder!’ What a way
to speak of these marvelous fluttering things that came down to earth
from another country as if bringing a message of peace and good will!
There was a great deal to be seen from the windows of the house. Sally
went at an early hour to the window in the hall and sat on the broad
leather cushion looking out. Miss Harvey had let her come through
when she went in to dust the parlor. Sally was greatly interested in
watching Mr. Gardiner shovel out the board walk with his big wooden
shovel. It seemed a foolish piece of work to her, for no sooner had he
shoveled off the snow than more came. ‘Why not wait until the snowstorm
was over?’ thought Sally. But people were so stupid compared with cats!
Mr. Gardiner looked cold and tired, and as if he would like to take
Sally’s advice. He kept on working though, and the snowflakes kept on
falling. It was too bad that they would not let Oxford into this part
of the house, but ever since the candlestick had been knocked off the
study mantelpiece, they seemed to feel one cat inside was enough. They
had given him one or two more trials when there was a mouse inside,
but he had clawed a sofa cushion, and scratched a piano leg, when
sharpening his claws. If he had only behaved well, he could have been
sitting on this green cushion watching the snowstorm, for there were
three windows and he could have had one to himself. Mr. Gardiner spied
Sally in the window and he made a low bow.
‘He has the best manners of any man I ever saw,’ Sally thought. ‘Men
usually do not stop to be polite to cats.’
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Miss Harvey was standing in the hall just behind Sally, but Sally was
sure the bow had been meant for herself.
When Sally went back into the kitchen, she found there was much more
to be seen there, for Elvira had thrown out some food for the birds,
and there were sparrows and grackles and pigeons picking up the crumbs.
There was some suet hanging on the branch of a pine tree and a bird
was feeding on it, swinging back and forth. Sally looked across at
the opposite house, and she saw Mrs. Conant in a storm-coat and hat
coming over to the plank walk. Perhaps this was why Mr. Gardiner had
been shoveling the snow off the plank walk so as to make it easier for
people to walk there.
Oxford was sitting at one of the kitchen windows, and Sally was in the
other. Mrs. Conant waved to them and to Elvira as she passed. Here was
another polite person.
The most exciting of all the windows was the bow window in the
dining-room at three o’clock in the afternoon. Sally had gone there for
a change and to have a little peace, for Oxford was in a trying mood.
Elvira came into the room with a plateful of crumbled-up bread in her
hand and opened the window. Sally looked out and saw a dozen pheasants
coming forward to get the bread. They all had sober feathers except
one bird, the pheasant cock, Elvira called him. He had a beautiful
white ring around his neck and a glorious long tail.
‘It is not so fine a tail as mine,’ said Sally, for her long tail with
its tiger markings was her chief beauty, and was often remarked on.
‘But he has the best tail I have ever seen on a bird.’
Presently a cat came up stealthily, and the pheasants took instant
flight. The cat looked cold and hungry, and Sally thought how fortunate
she was to be in a warm house herself. The kittens had very little milk
for supper, for the storm was such a bad one that the milkman had not
come.
‘We can get along without milk better than Sally and Oxford can, for
they would not understand,’ Elvira said to Miss Harvey as she put the
last milk in the pitcher into the kittens’ saucers.
‘We understand perfectly well,’ Sally said. ‘We are not such fools as
you take us for. We can understand all that you say, and you never can
understand us.’
It was snowing when Sally and Oxford gave a last look out of the
window before they settled down for the night, but in the morning all
was changed, and when the sun rose, the whole world was like fairyland,
for the branches were all glistening in the sun, as if they were made
of glass. The kittens went out for a stroll and met Mrs. Conant and her
husband. They kept sinking down through the crust, but Sally and Oxford
were so light they could walk on it with ease. Mrs. Conant was wearing
a beautiful fur coat.
‘It is almost as good-looking as mine,’ thought Sally, ‘but it must be
hard to be so big that one can’t walk on the crust. In winter I’d much
rather be a cat.’
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