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WHAT THE SNOW-MAN DID 951

a big frozen lump on the road, and when Ben tried to
run toward it, she had pulled him back, saying:

“Stop, Benny! Don’t touch the dirty little creature!
Let her alone — she ‘Il stop crying in a minute.”

“J wish I could give her a pair of shoes,” Ben had said ;
“her feet look so cold !”

“Oh! poor people like her don’t feel the cold. They
are used to going barefoot,” Milly had answered, still hurry-
ing him on.

They ended their homeward walk in silence. Benny
was feeling sorry for the very shabby and unhappy little
girl, and Milly was trying not to blame herself, or at least
to forget that pitiful little face by saying to herself: “It’s
nothing to me, anyway.”

That night, long after everybody was asleep, the snow-
soldier came to Milly.

She was frightened at seeing him standing near her,
but, somehow, she could n’t call out or make any noise.

“Get up!” he said sternly.

She obeyed him. And now comes the strangest part of
the story. She was Milly still, and yet so light that she
seemed to float beside him out of the room, and down the
stairs, and through the front door, and straight to the
wretched part of the city where the poor folks lived.
There she saw men, women, and children huddled together
on bare floors or heaps of straw and rags, with scarcely any-
thing to cover their poor, shivering bodies. Whenever the
show-man put his head in at the windows and doors, they
would shiver worse than before, and utter moans that