CHAPTER VIII
THE FIRST SNOWSTORM
Sally sat at the window watching her first snowstorm. She was entranced by the way the flakes fell. They came down so softly, flying through the air like tiny white butterflies, and when they reached the earth, they all joined together in a wonderful white blanket.
‘Oxford,’ she said, ‘isn’t this a beautiful world? Doesn’t it seem as if millions of tiny white butterflies were coming down to cover the earth with a white blanket?’
‘It looks more like powder to me, or rice,’ said Oxford. ‘I don’t see anything pretty about it. It’s just frozen rain.’
It was when her brother said things like this that Sally longed to have children who might perhaps be like her and understand how truly beautiful this wonderful world is. She did so wish that her great-grandfather was alive, for she was sure he would be a satisfying companion. He was a poet, and Elvira had sometimes read some of his verses aloud. They had been published in a book, and there were others that had never been printed. She longed to ask Elvira if her great-grandfather, William Furbush-Tailby, had ever written a poem about a snowstorm, but, although Elvira was unusually intelligent, for a person, Sally could not always make her thought-transference language understood. This time, however, it seemed to work, for Elvira took a book with writing in it out of a drawer in the cupboard and she said to Miss Harvey, ‘Did I ever read you Billy Furbush-Tailby’s poem on “The First Snowstorm of the Season”?’
Sally pricked up her ears, but Oxford Gray, Junior, went off to sleep, for verses bored him.
Sally was much impressed by the verses of her ancestor. She wished he were here now, sitting by her on the window-sill, for Oxford Gray, Junior, was so tiresome at times. ‘Rice, indeed, or powder!’ What a way to speak of these marvelous fluttering things that came down to earth from another country as if bringing a message of peace and good will!
There was a great deal to be seen from the windows of the house. Sally went at an early hour to the window in the hall and sat on the broad leather cushion looking out. Miss Harvey had let her come through when she went in to dust the parlor. Sally was greatly interested in watching Mr. Gardiner shovel out the board walk with his big wooden shovel. It seemed a foolish piece of work to her, for no sooner had he shoveled off the snow than more came. ‘Why not wait until the snowstorm was over?’ thought Sally. But people were so stupid compared with cats!
Mr. Gardiner looked cold and tired, and as if he would like to take Sally’s advice. He kept on working though, and the snowflakes kept on falling. It was too bad that they would not let Oxford into this part of the house, but ever since the candlestick had been knocked off the study mantelpiece, they seemed to feel one cat inside was enough. They had given him one or two more trials when there was a mouse inside, but he had clawed a sofa cushion, and scratched a piano leg, when sharpening his claws. If he had only behaved well, he could have been sitting on this green cushion watching the snowstorm, for there were three windows and he could have had one to himself. Mr. Gardiner spied Sally in the window and he made a low bow.
‘He has the best manners of any man I ever saw,’ Sally thought. ‘Men usually do not stop to be polite to cats.’
Miss Harvey was standing in the hall just behind Sally, but Sally was sure the bow had been meant for herself.
When Sally went back into the kitchen, she found there was much more to be seen there, for Elvira had thrown out some food for the birds, and there were sparrows and grackles and pigeons picking up the crumbs. There was some suet hanging on the branch of a pine tree and a bird was feeding on it, swinging back and forth. Sally looked across at the opposite house, and she saw Mrs. Conant in a storm-coat and hat coming over to the plank walk. Perhaps this was why Mr. Gardiner had been shoveling the snow off the plank walk so as to make it easier for people to walk there.
Oxford was sitting at one of the kitchen windows, and Sally was in the other. Mrs. Conant waved to them and to Elvira as she passed. Here was another polite person.
The most exciting of all the windows was the bow window in the dining-room at three o’clock in the afternoon. Sally had gone there for a change and to have a little peace, for Oxford was in a trying mood. Elvira came into the room with a plateful of crumbled-up bread in her hand and opened the window. Sally looked out and saw a dozen pheasants coming forward to get the bread. They all had sober feathers except one bird, the pheasant cock, Elvira called him. He had a beautiful white ring around his neck and a glorious long tail.
‘It is not so fine a tail as mine,’ said Sally, for her long tail with its tiger markings was her chief beauty, and was often remarked on. ‘But he has the best tail I have ever seen on a bird.’
Presently a cat came up stealthily, and the pheasants took instant flight. The cat looked cold and hungry, and Sally thought how fortunate she was to be in a warm house herself. The kittens had very little milk for supper, for the storm was such a bad one that the milkman had not come.
‘We can get along without milk better than Sally and Oxford can, for they would not understand,’ Elvira said to Miss Harvey as she put the last milk in the pitcher into the kittens’ saucers.
‘We understand perfectly well,’ Sally said. ‘We are not such fools as you take us for. We can understand all that you say, and you never can understand us.’
It was snowing when Sally and Oxford gave a last look out of the window before they settled down for the night, but in the morning all was changed, and when the sun rose, the whole world was like fairyland, for the branches were all glistening in the sun, as if they were made of glass. The kittens went out for a stroll and met Mrs. Conant and her husband. They kept sinking down through the crust, but Sally and Oxford were so light they could walk on it with ease. Mrs. Conant was wearing a beautiful fur coat.
‘It is almost as good-looking as mine,’ thought Sally, ‘but it must be hard to be so big that one can’t walk on the crust. In winter I’d much rather be a cat.’