Down the Snow Stairs. Alice Abigail Corkran

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      “As you did when Cousin Charlie and I played in the hay that day last summer,” cried Kitty.

      “Yes,” said Johnnie, and he began to mutter something Kitty did not understand.

      “We’ll play again next summer, and you’ll look on,” said Kitty.

      “Yes. How sweet the hay smells!” said Johnnie in a strange far-away voice.

      “Miss Kitty!” said some one behind.

      Turning round Kitty saw nurse standing with her two hands raised and her eyes round with alarm and trouble. “Oh, Miss Kitty, what have you done? what have you done?”

      “I am not going!” cried Kitty, stamping one bare foot. “I won’t go. Every one comes to Johnnie but me.”

      “What is the matter?” asked another anxious voice. It was the children’s mother. “Kitty here!” she added, very much amazed.

      “Yes, ma’am. Johnnie was sleeping like a lamb, he was. I slipped down just for a bit of supper. When I came up, there’s Miss Kitty, and there’s Johnnie, all awake and in a fever.”

      “Oh, Kitty! what have you done? what have you done?” said the poor mother as she knelt down by the bedside and with straining eyes gazed at the little boy muttering and talking to himself.

      A fear came over Kitty at her mother’s words and at the look in her eyes. She began to cry, but nurse in a moment had taken her in her arms, carried her upstairs, and put her into bed. She did not say a word, but she looked very grim.

      “Oh, nurse, have I done Johnnie any harm?” cried Kitty, springing out of bed and clutching at nurse’s skirt as she was leaving the room.

      “Harm!” repeated nurse, twitching her dress out of Kitty’s grasp. “The doctor said Johnnie might get well if he slept to-night and was kept quiet, and you went and waked him. It is the second time you—”

      Nurse paused. Then she jerked out, “That is the harm you have done,” and left the room.

      At those dreadful words Kitty felt cold: she stole back to bed, and turned her face to the wall. “Might Johnnie have got well if she had not waked him? Would he die now?” She did not sob, but she kept moaning to herself in the dark; and her heart sent up a prayer like a cry: “Pray God, do not let Johnnie die! Do not let Johnnie die!”

      “Hush, Kitty!” said her mother’s gentle voice. “Johnnie seems to be going to sleep; he is quieter now. Perhaps he will be better to-morrow.”

      “Oh, mamma! mamma!” cried Kitty, throwing herself into her mother’s arms. “I had so longed to see him! I had so longed to see him!”

      Her mother made Kitty lie down: she sat down by her bedside, and taking her two hands she spoke soothingly to her little girl. When Kitty’s sobs were quieter she told her how easy it is to get naughtier and naughtier unless we resist temptation. In every little heart are the seeds of naughtiness that will grow and grow.

      “But I was not so very naughty,” said Kitty with a big sob.

      “You were naughty. I should not love you if I did not say you were naughty,” the sweet voice continued, talking in Kitty’s ear. She sometimes lost what it said, but she heard the sound like a lullaby.

      “Punishment always follows naughtiness. It comes like the shadow that follows you in the sunshine. It may not be in pain to your body that it will come. It may come in grief for seeing another suffer for your fault; but punishment must follow wrong-doing.”

      Then again the tender voice spoke:

      “Your little heart tempted you to wake Johnnie. You ought to have resisted, to have said ‘No; what will comfort me may make Johnnie suffer.’” Then again the voice said: “We must resist temptation ... to win a blessing.”

      CHAPTER III

       DOWN THE SNOW STAIRS.

       Table of Contents

      “Get up! get up! get up!” said another voice.

      Kitty was wide awake and sitting up in a moment. Some one was standing by her bedside. Was it nurse? Her white cap and apron glimmered through the dusk.

      “How is Johnnie?” cried Kitty, starting up.

      It was not nurse; it was the snow-man staring at her with his blank eyes, and waving a great fingerless white hand to her in the moonlight.

      Kitty did not feel frightened; she sat up and looked at him. He held his pipe in one hand; with the other he beckoned to her. She could see the formless hand quite distinctly waving backward and forward.

      “Get up! get up! get up!” he repeated in a hoarse, muffled voice.

      “Go away, naughty snow-man,” said Kitty; “it is your fault that Johnnie is ill.”

      “Don’t you want to find the blue rose?” said the snow-man, with little pants between his words; he seemed very short of breath. His voice began with a rumble and a grumble, and ended in a squeak.

      “The blue rose that will cure Johnnie! Oh! but where can I find it?” eagerly cried Kitty, standing up in bed, and pressing up both hands under her chin.

      “Come away! come away! come away!” said the snow-man, moving off.

      He had an extraordinary way of walking—a shuffling, shambling, sliding way, and as he moved he still waved that white formless hand, and gazed at Kitty with his blank eyeless sockets.

      “I dare not go downstairs again,” said Kitty.

      But the snow-man was gliding, shambling, shuffling toward the window. He opened it, passed out, put his head back into the room, and continued to beckon to her.

      Kitty jumped down to see what it meant. “I must put something on, or I shall catch cold,” she remarked, glancing down at her night-gown; but as her feet touched the ground she perceived that she was ready dressed.

      “How won—” she began; then she paused, with her mouth open, looking at something much more extraordinary. Just outside her window spread a spacious flight of steps. Lovely stairs, white as pearl! On one side they towered upward, gleaming brighter and brighter till they touched the moon; on the other, they reached downward, till it made her dizzy to look. Far down as she could see the great white stairs reached.

      As Kitty stood on the ledge of her window, voices sounded around her; she thought she heard her mother’s voice, her father’s voice, nurse’s voice, calling: “Cure Johnnie! cure Johnnie!”

      A bell pealed from the church steeple; it seemed to call out: “Cure Johnnie!”

      Then other voices came again, floating along down or up the white stairs, she could not tell which, whispering:

      “Find СКАЧАТЬ