THE SNOW GARDEN

THERE was once a cottage among the hills in
which a young girl lived with her father. You
cannot imagine a lonelier-looking place than it
was. Below it the road went in a kind of steep
zigzag to the valley. Above rose the cold solitary
mountain peaks covered with snow, and above
them the pale wintry sky, and just now a few stars
were beginning to peep out as Myra, for that was
her name, took her last look before barring the
door and settling herself and her father comfort-
ably down to supper. She had cooked an egg
apiece and some bacon, for her father and herself,
and that, with some rye-bread and milk, was all
they had between them. . It was so nice indoors, the
father thought, with this handy little maid to wait
on him. ‘It is so nice indoors,’ Myra thought,
‘now I have got father back again.’ She had
poked the fire, pulled down her sleeves, shaken up
the cushion in her father’s chair, and they were just

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