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"I'm creaking all over, it's so wonderfully cold!" said the snowman. "The wind can certainly bite some life into you! And how that glowing creature up there does stare!" He meant the Sun, which was just about to set. "She shan't make me blink. I can hold on to my bits!"

His eyes were two large triangular fragments of roof tile; his mouth was a piece of an old rake, which gave him teeth. He had been born amid the boys' hurrahs, greeted by the jingling bells and cracking whips of the sleighs.

The Sun went down, and the full moon rose, round and large, bright and beautiful in the blue sky. "There she is again, coming from another direction!" said the snowman. He thought it was the Sun appearing again. "I've cured her of staring! Now she can hang up there and shine so I can see myself. If only I knew how to move about! I'd so love to move! If I could, I'd go down and slide on the ice, as I saw the boys doing. But I don't know how to run!"

"Away! Away!" barked the old watchdog on his chain. He was rather hoarse, and had been ever since he was a house dog and used to lie under the stove. "The Sun will soon teach you to run! I saw her do it to your predecessor last year, and to his predecessor too. Away! Away! And away they've all gone!"

"I don't understand you, my friend!" said the snowman. "Is that one up there going to teach me to run?" He meant the Moon. "Well, she certainly ran off earlier, when I stared hard at her. Now she's creeping up from another direction!"

"You know nothing!" said the chained dog. "But then, you've only just been slapped together! The one you see now is called the Moon; the one that went away was the Sun. She'll be back tomorrow, and she'll soon teach you to run down into the moat. We'll have a change in the weather before long. I can feel it in my left hind leg; there's a shooting pain in it. The weather's going to change!"

"I don't understand him!" said the snowman. "But I have a feeling that what he's saying is unpleasant. That one who stared and went down, the one he calls the Sun, she's no friend of mine either. I can feel it!"

"Away! Away!" barked the chained dog. He turned round three times, then lay down in his kennel to sleep. And the weather really did change. In the early morning a fog, thick and clammy, settled over the whole countryside; at dawn a breeze sprang up. The wind was so icy that the frost took a firm hold, but what a sight there was when the Sun rose! All the trees and bushes were covered in hoarfrost; it was like a whole forest of white coral, as though every branch had been showered with radiant white blossoms. The countless delicate twigs, hidden in summer by all the leaves, now appeared, every single one. They made a lacework of such gleaming whiteness that a white radiance seemed to stream from every branch. The weeping birch stirred in the wind, alive as the trees are in summertime. It was a sight of matchless beauty! And when the Sun shone—oh, how everything sparkled, as though dusted with diamond powder! Great diamonds glittered over the snow-covered earth, or you might have thought that countless tiny candles were burning there, whiter even than the white snow.

"It's a sight of matchless beauty!" said a young girl who had come out into the garden with a young man. They stopped just beside the snowman to look at the glittering trees. "You never see anything lovelier in summer!" she said, and her eyes shone.

"And you certainly don't have a fellow like that!" said the young man, pointing to the snowman. "He's splendid!" The young girl laughed, nodded to the snowman, then danced away with her friend over the snow, which creaked beneath them as though they were walking on starch.

"Who were those two?" the snowman asked the chained dog. "You've been here longer than I have. Do you know them?" "I do!" said the dog. "She's patted me, and he's given me a bone with meat on it. I don't bite those two!"

"But what are they doing here?" asked the snowman. "Sweethearrrrrts!" said the chained dog. "They're going to move into a kennel and gnaw bones together. Away! Away!"

"Are those two as important as you and I?" asked the snowman. "They're part of the family!" said the chained dog. "You certainly know very little when you were born yesterday! I can tell that from you! I have age and knowledge on my side. I know everyone here! And I've known a time when I wasn't standing out here in the cold on a chain. Away! Away!"

"The cold is wonderful!" said the snowman. "Tell me, tell me! But don't rattle your chain, because it makes me crack!" "Away! Away!" barked the chained dog. "I was a puppy once. Little and lovely, they said. In those days I lay in a velvet chair inside the house, or in the laps of the grandest people in the family. They kissed my muzzle and wiped my paws with an embroidered handkerchief. They called me 'the loveliest darling' and 'sweet little cuddlykins,' but then I grew too big for them! So they gave me to the housekeeper, and I went down to the basement! You can see into it from where you're standing; you can look down into the room where I was master, for that's what I was with the housekeeper. It may not have been as grand as upstairs, but it was more comfortable. I wasn't squeezed and dragged about by children as I had been upstairs. My food was just as good as before, and there was much more of it! I had my own cushion, and then there was a stove. At this time of year it's the loveliest thing in the world! I used to creep right underneath it till I was quite out of sight. Oh, I still dream of that stove! Away! Away!"

"Is a stove so lovely to look at?" asked the snowman. "Does it look like me?" "It's the very opposite of you! It's coal-black, with a long neck and a brass drum. It eats firewood till flames come out of its mouth. You must stay beside it, close up against it, or underneath it. It's the most delightful feeling! You ought to be able to see it through the window from where you're standing!"

The snowman looked, and sure enough, he saw a gleaming black object with a brass drum; firelight shone from its lower part. The snowman felt quite strange. He had a feeling he could not account for. Something came over him that he had never known, though all human beings know it, unless they are snowmen.

"And why did you leave her?" asked the snowman. He felt that it must be a female creature. "How could you leave such a place?" "I had no choice!" said the chained dog. "They threw me out and chained me up here. I'd bitten the youngest young gentleman in the leg because he kicked away the bone I was gnawing. A bone for a bone, I say! But they took it badly, and I've been chained up ever since. And I've lost my clear voice. Just listen to how hoarse I am: Away! Away! That was the end of it!"

The snowman was no longer listening. He kept gazing into the housekeeper's basement, down into her room, where the stove stood on its four iron legs and looked just as tall as the snowman himself.

"There's such a strange creaking inside me!" he said. "Shall I never get in there? It's an innocent wish, and surely our innocent wishes ought to be granted. It's my greatest wish, my only wish, and it would be almost unjust if it weren't fulfilled. I must get in there. I must lean against her, even if I have to smash the window!"

"You'll never get in there!" said the chained dog. "And if you reached the stove, you'd be away! Away!" "I'm as good as gone already!" said the snowman. "I think I'm breaking in two!"

All day the snowman stood looking through the window. At twilight the room became still more inviting. The stove shone with a gentle light such as neither the Moon nor the Sun can give, no, only a stove when there is something burning inside it. Whenever they opened its door, the flame leapt out, as it was in the habit of doing. It cast a rich red glow over the snowman's white face, and the red light shone straight from his breast.

"I can't bear it!" he said. "How lovely she looks when she puts out her tongue!" The night was very long, but not for the snowman. He stood lost in his own delightful thoughts, and they froze till they creaked.

By morning the basement windows were frozen over. They bore the loveliest frost flowers any snowman could wish for, but they hid the stove. The panes would not thaw; he could not see her. Everything creaked and crackled. It was just the sort of frosty weather that ought to please a snowman, but he was not pleased. He could and should have felt so happy, but he was not happy. He was pining for the stove.

"That's a terrible illness for a snowman!" said the chained dog. "I've suffered from it too, but I've got over it! Away! Away! Now we'll have a change in the weather!"

And the weather did change: a thaw set in. The thaw grew stronger, and the snowman grew smaller. He said nothing, he made no complaint, and that is the surest sign.

One morning he collapsed. Something like a broom handle stuck up where he had stood; the boys had built him round it. "Now I understand his longing!" said the chained dog. "The snowman had a stove scraper inside him! That's what was stirring in him. Now it's all over. Away! Away!"

And soon winter was over too. "Away! Away!" barked the chained dog, but the little girls about the place sang: "Spring up, sweet woodruff, fresh and fair! Hang out your woolly mitten, willow! Come, cuckoo, lark, sing in the air! February's end brings spring to share!

I'll sing along—cuckoo! Tweet-tweet! Come, dear Sun, come often, sweet!" And then no one thinks of the snowman!