Part 11

“You can reward me by giving me this little hand, which I fear but for me would have been but a cat’s paw to the end of time.”

Phelia, to this proposition--which, perhaps, was not quite unexpected--yielded a gracious assent; and the next day the young couple journeyed together to Catland, where they were immediately married, and, soon succeeding to the throne, lived and reigned many, many happy years; and, for any thing I have ever heard, they do so still.

THE FROST-MAIDEN

Once there was a little boy, who more than any thing else loved to look at pictures. He had but few books containing them, nor were his parents able to hang their walls with beautiful paintings and engravings, as rich people can do. Still, little Claude found pictures all about him. In the spring, it was the tender green of the new leaves and the springing grass; in the summer, the thousand different flowers and the beautiful birds; in the autumn, the gorgeous scarlet and golden tints of the changing woods; and in the winter--oh, in the winter--Claude never wanted for pictures!

Every morning there they were, twelve new ones, all different, ready placed to meet his eyes as soon as they should open!

But what do you think these twelve pictures were, and where were they drawn?

Why, on the twelve panes of glass in the window of Claude’s little bedroom.

Every morning was to the boy a new delight; and how sorry he felt, if, by sleeping a little later than usual, he lost a few minutes of the half hour which he usually enjoyed before his mother called him to get up.

The pictures were quite different. Sometimes there was a dense forest covering all one pane, the tree tops crowded together with scarcely any gap between them.

Sometimes there was a grove at one side, and a wide, lawn-like field stretching away out of sight at the other.

Sometimes a few scattered trees, with a brook winding among them, and troops of deer drinking at it.

Sometimes a wild and savage ravine between two precipices, and a crazy waterfall dashing down between them.

Sometimes a flowery plain, with a star-spangled sky overhead, and a flower wreathed May-pole, waiting quietly for a troop of happy children to dance about it in the sunrise.

Sometimes, behind a trim and quiet-looking group of trees, Claude could see the outline of a stately castle, its chimneys and turrets peeping over the tree tops.

Sometimes it was a ruined and deserted tower, standing gloomy and solitary upon a craggy mountain side.

In short, there was no end to the beauty and variety of the pictures in Claude’s gallery.

But who drew them in a single night, while all in the house slept?

This question troubled the boy’s mind constantly. His mother said the frost did it; but how could that be? “Frost has nothing lovely about him,” thought Claude. “He turns all my beautiful flowers to ugly black stalks as soon as he sees them; he makes the ground hard and white, and changes the soft green of the grass to a dull brown; he makes my mother’s pretty face look blue and pinched, and spoils her curls. How can it be the frost who draws my dear pictures?”

His mother could not tell him why,--only she was quite sure it was the frost, because everybody said so.

He asked his father, who laughed, and told him that when he was older he would find out.

So Claude asked no more questions, but wondered all the more.

One morning there was a new picture, one which had never come before; and Claude’s eyes only glanced at the rest, turning again and again to this new one, which seemed to call him to it as if it spoke.

A low, irregular mountain, with a wide plain at its foot,--that was all.

But stop!--was it a mountain? No,--it was a palace; very large, and very fantastic in its shape, but evidently a palace, and a very magnificent one.

What he had at first taken for crags and ice-peaks were in reality graceful minarets and spires; what he had supposed a mass of frozen snow upon the mountain top was the sheeny, silvered roof of the palace; what had been solitary trees upon the mountain side were now gayly floating banners; little clear spots, which he had not noticed at first, now showed as thousands of windows and scores of doors; what, at the first glance, seemed wild bushes about the base of the hill, suddenly became a troop of guards, some mounted, some on foot.

Claude, astonished, raised himself upon his elbow to look more closely at this transformation. Just then his mother entered the room to call him to breakfast.

“See, see, mother!” cried he, “that beautiful palace, in the middle of my window! How I wish I could really go to it!”

“Palace, child!” said his mother, “I see no palace. There is something there which looks like a mountain, but nothing more. You will hurt yourself, dear boy, looking so much at these frost pictures; we shall have you crazy next. Come, now, and eat some nice, warm breakfast.”