"Oh!" shrieked Dame Penny, "what shall we do, what shall we do?"
"Be quiet," said Dame Louisa with dignity. She untied her large
poke-bonnet which was made of straw--she was unable to have a velvet
one for winter, now her Christmas-trees were dead--and she hung it on
the whip. Then she drew a match from her pocket, and set fire to the
bonnet. The light fabric blazed up directly, and the Snow Man stopped
short. "If you come any nearer," shrieked Dame Louisa, "I'll put this
right in your face and--melt you!"
"Give me back my company," shouted the Snow Man in a doubtful voice.
"You can't have your company," said Dame Louisa, shaking the blazing
bonnet defiantly at him.
"To think of the days I've spent in their yards, slowly melting and
suffering everything, and my not having one visit back," grumbled the
Snow Man. But he stood still; he never took a step forward after Dame
Louisa had set her bonnet on fire.
It was lucky Dame Louisa had worn a worsted scarf tied over her
bonnet, and could now use it for a bonnet.
The cold was intense, and had it not been that Dame Penny and Dame
Louisa both wore their Bay State shawls over their beaver sacques, and
their stone-marten tippets and muffs, and blue worsted stockings
drawn over their shoes, they would certainly have frozen. As for the
children, they would never have reached home alive if it had not been
for the pails and tubs of water.
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