The Snow Man Page #2

								

crow, and has a long neck and a brass knob; it eats firewood, so
that fire spurts out of its mouth. We should keep on one side, or
under it, to be comfortable. You can see it through the window, from
where you stand."

Then the Snow Man looked, and saw a bright polished thing with a
brazen knob, and fire gleaming from the lower part of it. The Snow Man
felt quite a strange sensation come over him; it was very odd, he knew
not what it meant, and he could not account for it. But there are
people who are not men of snow, who understand what it is. "'And why
did you leave her?" asked the Snow Man, for it seemed to him that
the stove must be of the female sex. "How could you give up such a
comfortable place?"

"I was obliged," replied the yard-dog. "They turned me out of
doors, and chained me up here. I had bitten the youngest of my
master's sons in the leg, because he kicked away the bone I was
gnawing. 'Bone for bone,' I thought; but they were so angry, and
from that time I have been fastened with a chain, and lost my bone.
Don't you hear how hoarse I am. Away, away! I can't talk any more like
other dogs. Away, away, that is the end of it all."

But the Snow Man was no longer listening. He was looking into
the housekeeper's room on the lower storey; where the stove stood on
its four iron legs, looking about the same size as the Snow Man
himself. "What a strange crackling I feel within me," he said.
"Shall I ever get in there? It is an innocent wish, and innocent
wishes are sure to be fulfilled. I must go in there and lean against
her, even if I have to break the window."

"You must never go in there," said the yard-dog, "for if you
approach the stove, you'll melt away, away."

"I might as well go," said the Snow Man, "for I think I am
breaking up as it is."

During the whole day the Snow Man stood looking in through the
window, and in the twilight hour the room became still more
inviting, for from the stove came a gentle glow, not like the sun or
the moon; no, only the bright light which gleams from a stove when
it has been well fed. When the door of the stove was opened, the
flames darted out of its mouth; this is customary with all stoves. The
light of the flames fell directly on the face and breast of the Snow
Man with a ruddy gleam. "I can endure it no longer," said he; "how
beautiful it looks when it stretches out its tongue?"

The night was long, but did not appear so to the Snow Man, who
stood there enjoying his own reflections, and crackling with the cold.
In the morning, the window-panes of the housekeeper's room were
covered with ice. They were the most beautiful ice-flowers any Snow
Man could desire, but they concealed the stove. These window-panes
would not thaw, and he could see nothing of the stove, which he
pictured to himself, as if it had been a lovely human being. The
snow crackled and the wind whistled around him; it was just the kind
of frosty weather a Snow Man might thoroughly enjoy. But he did not
enjoy it; how, indeed, could he enjoy anything when he was "stove
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