Page:Tales and Legends from the Land of the Tzar.djvu/76

60 "What business is that of yours?"

Jack Frost smiled.

"We are waiting for our lovers," said Masha, who thought her sister had been rather rude. "But I suppose they have lost their way in this horrid, dark forest."

"Queer place to wait for lovers," Jack Frost said. "I hardly think they would be such asses as to come here. Are you still warm, pretty maidens?"

"Get away with you, you old stupid, do! Can't you see that we are nearly frozen to death," cried Pasha angrily.

Still Jack Frost kept on coming closer and closer to them, and at last he leaped from the fir-tree, touched them with his ice-cold hands, which froze them to death, for Jack Frost had somehow taken a dislike to the girls, and thus Pasha and Masha departed this world of sorrow.

In the morning the woman sent her husband to go and fetch them home again, with all the treasures that she thought they would be sure to have. Away went the old man to the pine forest, where, to his horror, he found the dead bodies of his two daughters lying on the ice-hill. He took them up, kissed their pale, cold faces, put them in his sledge, and drove home to his wife, who came out smiling to meet him; but alas for those smiles! they died away, as Pasha and Masha had done.

"Where are my children?" she cried out.

The old man, after uncovering the rugs, displayed the bodies of the two unfortunate girls lying dead in