Page:Fairy tales and stories (Andersen, Tegner).djvu/516

482 in my left hind leg; there is a shooting pain in it. We shall have a change."

"I do not understand you," said the snow man; "but I have a presentiment that it is something unpleasant you mean. He that glowed and went down, whom you call sun, is not my friend, either; my instinct tells me that."

"Go! go!" barked the yard-dog, and walked round three times, and then went into his kennel and lay down to sleep.

There really came a change in the weather. In the early morning a thick clammy fog lay over the whole district. At dawn it began to clear up; but the wind was icy cold, and a regular frost seemed to have set in. What a sight it was when the sun rose! All the trees and bushes were covered with hoar-frost. They looked like a whole forest of white corals, as if all the branches were overloaded with sparkling white flowers. The innumerable delicate little shoots which we do not see in the summer time on account of the luxuriant foliage were now every one of them visible, and looked like sparkling white lace-work, and as if a bright luster streamed out from every branch. The weeping birch waved in the wind. There was life in it, as in the trees in summer time. It was wonderfully beautiful in the sunshine.

How everything sparkled! It seemed as if everything was powdered with diamond dust, and as if large diamonds were sparkling all over the snow that covered the ground; or one might imagine that innumerable little candles were burning with a light still whiter than the white snow.

"How wonderfully beautiful it is!" said a young girl, who stepped out into the garden in company with a young man, and stopped close to the snow man, where they stood looking at the glittering trees. "There is no finer sight to be seen in the summer," she said, and her eyes sparkled.

"And such a fellow as this one is not to be seen at all," said the young man, pointing to the snow man. "He is splendid!"

The young girl laughed, nodded to the snow man, and then danced away over the snow with her friend. The snow creaked under their feet, as if they walked on starch.

"Who were those two?" asked the snow man of the yard-dog. "You have been longer here than I have. Do you know them?"

"Of course I do," said the yard-dog. "She strokes me, and he gives me bones. I should not think of biting either of them."

"But what are they?" asked the snow man.

"Lover-r-rs," said the yard-dog. "They are going to move into the same kennel and gnaw bones together. Go! go!"

"Are those two as important as you or I?" asked the snow man.

"They belong to the family," said the yard-dog. "One does n't know much, of course, when one was born only yesterday. I can see that by you. I am old and experienced. I know everybody in this house, and I