The Child's Book of the Seasons Part 2

IV

WINTER

In Winter, real Winter, we get up with our teeth chattering to tell each other how cold it is, and we find the water frozen in the basin, and the soap frozen to the soap-dish, and the sponge frozen hard. That is what Winter is like indoors, and it is not very nice. But there is a nice indoor Winter too, when the fire is burning in the study grate with logs on it from old broken s.h.i.+ps, making blue flames that lick about the chimney-hole. The Imp and the Elf plant cus.h.i.+ons on the floor, and I sit in a big chair and read stories to them out of a book or tell them out of my head, making them up as I go along. That is the greatest fun, because I do not know any better than the children what is going to happen, whether the green pigmy or the blue will win in the battle in the water lily, or whether the little boy with scarlet shoes will be eaten by the giant, or whether he will make friends with him and be asked to stop to tea. We can make the stories do just what we want, be happy if we are happy, or full of sc.r.a.pes if we are feeling naughty.

When we are in the middle of stories like this, we hear a tremendous screaming, screaming, screaming outside, and a white cloud pa.s.ses the window with a great, shrill shriek, and we all jump up crying, "The gulls, the gulls!"

And in the meadow and in the garden and flying in the air, screaming and laughing with their weird voices, are hundreds of seagulls, blown inland from the sea, bringing wild weather with them. You know the place where we live is only a few miles from the sea, where it runs up into the land in a broad, sandy bay that ends in wide marshes. There are seagulls in the bay all the year round, and we sometimes see them in the fields in Summer before the storms reach us from the west. But in Winter when the cold and windy weather is coming, they fly in great flocks like clouds of huge snow-flakes, and we watch them from the window and wonder how soon the storm will follow them. And the next day or the day after, or sometimes the very day when they come, the air is white again, this time with driving snow. It comes flying past the windows, to be whirled up high by the gale and dropped again till we see the ground speckled with white, and then white everywhere except close round the big tree trunks.

Even the branches of the trees are heaped with snow, so they look like white boughs with black shadows beneath them.

It snows all day and all night, and when our eyes are tired of looking at the s.h.i.+ning dazzling white, we come away from the window and sit down by the fire, and talk about it, and think of children long ago, who used to tell each other, when it was snowing, that geese were being plucked in Heaven.

The Imp and the Elf put the matter another way. The Imp says, "It's old King Frost freezing the rain, isn't it, Ogre?" I say "yes." And the Elf goes on, "He does it because he wants to run about and play without hurting the poor little plants. He knows that he is so cold that they would die, like the children in the story book, if he danced about on top of them, without covering them with a blanket So he just freezes the rain into a big cosy white blanket for them and lays It gently down."

Presently, after we have been talking and telling stories for a little, the Imp cries out, "Ogre, Ogre, we have forgotten all about the cocoanut," and the Elf shouts, "Oh yes, the cocoanut," and away they fly, leaving the door open and a horrible draught in the room. But soon they run back again, with a saw and a gimlet, and a round, hard, hairy cocoanut. We bore a few holes with the gimlet, to let the cocoanut milk run out. The Imp likes cocoanut milk, but the Elf hates it, and says it is just like medicine. Then comes the difficult part. I have to hold the cocoanut steady on the edge of a chair, and saw away at it, all round the end, while the Imp and the Elf stand watching, till the hard sh.e.l.l is cut through. Then we knock the end off and the cocoanut is ready.

Ready for what, you want to know? Look out of the window and then you will understand. All the ground is covered with snow, and the poor birds are finding it difficult to find their food. The Imp and the Elf, who love all live things, and the birds above all, could tell you a little about that, for every winter day, as soon as breakfast is over, they collect all the sc.r.a.ps off everybody's plates, and the crumbs off the bread-board, and throw a great bowl of food out on the snowy lawn. And then there is a fine clutter and a fuss. Starlings, and jackdaws, and sparrows, and blackbirds, and thrushes, and sometimes rooks, and once, one exciting day, a couple of magpies, all squabble and fight for the food, and of course the sparrows get the best of it, because though they are so small they are the cheekiest little birds that ever are. When all the food is done the birds fly away, and leave the snow covered with the marks of their feet, like very delicate tracery, or like that piece of embroidery that the Elf is trying to do for a Christmas present, when she is not busy with something else.

Well, well, but still you have not told us what you want to do with the cocoanut. Wait just a minute, just half a minute, while I tell you about the robin. Little Mr. Redbreast does not let us see much of himself in summer, when he is off to the hedges and the hazel woods, having as gay a time as a happy little bird knows how to enjoy. But he is a lazy small gentleman, and as soon as the cold weather comes, he flies back to the houses where he has a chance of sc.r.a.ps. He even flies in at the pantry window and chirps at the cook till she gives him some food.

There are some other little birds just like the robin in this and these are the t.i.ts. In the Summer we can see them in the woods if we go to look for them, but they do not trouble about repaying our call; they do not come to our gardens very often. But when Winter comes things are on quite a different footing. They are very fond of suet or fat or the white inside of a cocoanut, and as soon as the snow comes so do they, looking for their food. We tie the cocoanut up with string and hang it outside the study window from a big nail, and before it has been there very long there is a fluttering of wings and a little blue-capped bird with a green coat, blue splashes on his wings, and a golden waistcoat, perches on the top of it. He puts his head first on this side and then on that, and then he nimbly hops to the end of the cocoanut, just above the hole, bends over, and peeps in. He flutters off into the air and perches again, this time in the mouth of the hole; and then suddenly he plunges his head in and has a good peck at the juicy white stuff inside.

Presently another blue t.i.t comes flying, and then another. They perch on the top of the cocoanut and quarrel and flap about till the first t.i.t has finished, and then they both try to get into the hole together and find that it is not big enough. We all watch them and would like to clap our hands at the performance but dare not for fear of frightening them.

At the beginning of the Winter the t.i.ts are very shy, but later on, if the window is open, they often alight on the window-sill and have a good look about the room when they have had their turn at the cocoanut and are waiting till the others have done to have a second peck.

I think all the Seasons are jolly in their own way, and perhaps it is a good thing that they are all so different. Do you remember the Autumn fairy story? Well the Seasons really are just like a family of sisters, and we should find them very dull if they were all exactly the same.

After the snowstorms, when we go out together, things are quite different, and we are quite different. The Imp and the Elf wear red woolly caps instead of sunbonnet and straw hat. They wear thick, fluffy coats and piles of things underneath them, and thick furry gloves. Why, the Elf carries a m.u.f.f just like any grown-up. And the ground has changed as much as they. It is all white with snow, so that it is difficult to believe that the hayfield where we played in Summer is really the same place. We put on our thickest boots, and they go crunch, crunch in the crisp snow. And we gather the snow in our hands and make s...o...b..a.l.l.s and throw them at each other. And then we make a giant s...o...b..ll, The Imp makes the biggest s...o...b..ll he can in his hands and then puts it on the ground and rolls it about. Everywhere it rolls the snow clings to it, and it gets bigger and bigger till at last it is nearly as big as the Imp himself and it takes all three of us to roll it. We roll another and put it on the top of the first, and then a smaller one and put it on the top of that, and then we roll snow into long lumps for arms, and there we have our snow-man. We make eyes for him with little blobs of earth, and a nose and a mouth, and in his mouth we always put one of my pipes to make the poor fellow comfortable.

When we are tired of making s...o...b..a.l.l.s and snow-men we go out of the garden and across the road and along the field paths to the wood, tramping through the s.h.i.+ning snow. And we drag something behind us: can you guess what it is? Do you remember in the fairy stories about the people who lived near the forests? When the winter came they used to s.h.i.+ver and rub their cold hands and go to the forests for firewood. And as there were wolves in the forest they used to take a sledge so that they could carry the sticks quickly back again before the wolves could catch them. Well, when we go to the woods in winter we pretend that we are going to the forests for firewood and we drag the Imp's big wooden sledge behind us, and keep a bright look-out for wolves, though, of course, there are no wolves in England now. All the same it is very good fun to pretend that there are.

A jolly time we have on the way to the woods. The hedges are all bright with hips and haws, coral colour and scarlet, the fruits of the wild rose and the hawthorn. They glitter like crimson jewels in the white hedges, where the birds are eating them as fast as they can. The sunlight s.h.i.+mmers on the snow of the fields and the snow of the woods, and the broad white s.h.i.+ning slopes of the distant hills. And, of course, all the way we watch carefully for the tracks of the wolves. We do not find them, but we find the tracks of birds that have gone hop, hop, hop, leaving each time the print of their feet in the snow, and the little paddy tracks of the rabbits, and the flap tracks made by the rooks'

wings as they flag up from the ground.

For a long time the road is all up hill, but then we come to a deep slope down, when the Elf and the Imp sit on the sledge, and I give them a push off, and away they slide, quicker and quicker all the way to the bottom; and then, instead of going straight on to the wood, they drag the sledge up and go down again, and then once more, and then we all go down together and sometimes end in a heap on the snow.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

When we leave the sliding hill we go up into the woods, and sometimes really do find the tracks of a big four-footed animal. The Imp and the Elf cry, "Wolf, wolf," but we know that really it is not a wolf, but a big red fox with a bushy tail, who has pa.s.sed that way in the night, perhaps after stealing a chicken from the yard of one of the farms.

The woods are like fairy woods now, just as if the fairies had hung them with glittering jewels, for they are covered with snow and frost, and icicles, too, when the snow on the boughs has begun to melt and then been frozen again. We hear crunch, crash, crash, crunch, and then the woods are very still for a moment, and then we hear a great heavy crunch, and perhaps see a ma.s.s of caked snow tumble off a branch to the ground.

If it is near Chrismas time we do not bother about looking for sticks and dead branches. We walk straight along the edge of the wood to where three stout holly bushes grow close together. You cannot think how pretty they look, with their dark green leaves and red berries, and the white snow resting on the leaves, and you just cannot think how p.r.i.c.kled we get in picking the branches of holly. But we think of Christmas fun, and do not mind the p.r.i.c.kles much, while the Elf sings:

"Get the pale mistletoe, And the red holly.

Hang them up, Hang them up, We will be jolly.

"Kiss under mistletoe, Laugh under holly, Hang them up, Hang them up, We will be jolly."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The mistletoe is not so easy to find as the holly. I remember once after we had piled the sledge with holly and dragged it home, the Elf pouted her lips and looked very unhappy and said, "There isn't a mistletoe tree anywhere in all the world, not even in the Long Wood. We shan't have any mistletoe for Christmas." Things really did look rather sad, so I sent her off to ask the old gardener about it, and the Imp went too. In about an hour they came running back all smiles and happiness, and with their arms as full as they could be. I shouted out to them as they went past the window, "Where did you get all that mistletoe?" And they laughed and said that it grew on the apple tree in the orchard, and that the old gardener had cut it for them, and promised to let them bob for apples in a bucket in the wood-shed if they were quick back. That is really and truly the way the mistletoe grows. It is just like a baby that will not leave its nurse. It pines away and will do nothing by itself, so it has to be stuck into another tree to grow there more happily.

But you know the snow does not last all the Winter. After Christmas, and before, there are weeks without any snow at all, and then we find it rather sorrowful to walk over the bleak bare fields. But the hips and haws are bright in the hedges, and whenever there is suns.h.i.+ne everything is made jolly. And then, too, it is great fun to watch them ploughing the land ready for next year's corn.

"Old Susan isn't pulling hay carts now," says the Elf, and we look up and there is Susan side by side with another of the farm horses harnessed to a plough. And a boy, a big strong boy, holds the handles of the plough and the reins at the same time, and shouts to the horses, and they cross the field slowly, tramp, tramp, tramp, and the rough earth is turned over by the steel ploughshare, all dark and earthy, ready for the seed. In the middle of one of the fields is a special friend of the Imp's. He wears a battered hat and an old green coat, and a red worsted scarf that flaps in the wind. He is made of two sticks, one stuck in the earth and one nailed across it, and he is called Sir John Scarecrow, because it is his duty to scare the birds from the field. But we have laughed many a day to see the rooks perched on his broken hat and tattered arms.

When we think of sowing seeds we think of Spring with the new corn green on the red ground, and when we think of Spring we think of Summer, when it is tall and wavy in the wind, and when we think of Summer we think of Autumn when the corn is golden and cut, and then, why, then we come to Winter again. And now the Imp and the Elf say that I have told you enough about our Seasons, and that I must tell them fairy stories till it is time for them to go to bed. So here is good-bye to you and a piece of advice. If you have got any grown-ups near at hand and it is not quite bedtime, if I were you I would ask them to tell you stories, too.