"Are you warm, maidens? Are you warm, little red cheeks? Are you warm,
little pigeons?"
"Ugh, Frost, the cold is hurting us. We are frozen. We are waiting for
our bridegrooms, but the cursed fellows have not turned up."
Frost came a little lower in the tree, and crackled louder and
swifter.
"Are you warm, maidens? Are you warm, my little red cheeks?"
"Go to the devil!" they cried out. "Are you blind? Our hands and feet
are frozen!"
Frost came still lower in the branches, and cracked and crackled
louder than ever.
"Are you warm, maidens?" he asked.
"Into the pit with you, with all the fiends," the girls screamed at
him, "you ugly, wretched fellow!"... And as they were cursing at him
their bad words died on their lips, for the two girls, the cross
children of the cruel stepmother, were frozen stiff where they sat.
Frost hung from the lowest branches of the tree, swaying and crackling
while he looked at the anger frozen on their faces. Then he climbed
swiftly up again, and crackling and cracking, chuckling to himself, he
went off, leaping from fir tree to fir tree, this way and that through
the white, frozen forest.