“Warm, warm am I, dear father Frost,” she replied. Frost began to descend lower, all the more cracking and snapping his fingers. To the maiden said Frost: “Art thou warm, maiden? Art thou warm, fair one?” The girl could scarcely draw her breath, but still she replied: “Warm am I, Frost dear; warm am I, father dear!” Frost began cracking more than ever, and more loudly did he snap his fingers, and to the maiden he said: “Art thou warm, maiden? Art thou warm, pretty one? Art thou warm, my darling?” The girl was by this time numbed with cold, and she could scarcely make herself heard as she replied: “Oh! Quite warm, Frost dearest!” Then Frost took pity on the girl, wrapped her up in furs and warmed her with blankets. Next morning the old woman said to her husband: “Drive out, old greybeard, and wake the young people!” The old man harnessed his horse and drove off. When he came to where his daughter was, he found she was alive and had got a good pelisse, a costly bridal veil and a pannier with rich gifts. He stowed everything away on the sledge without saying a word, took a seat on it with his daughter, and drove back. They reached home, and the daughter fell at her step-mother’s feet. The old woman was thunderstruck when she saw the girl alive, and the new pelisse and the basket of linen. “Ah, you wretch!” she cries, “But you sha’n’t trick me!” Well, a little later the old woman says to her husband: “Take my daughters, too, to their bridegroom. The presents he’s made are nothing to what he’ll give them.” Well, early next morning the old woman gave her girls their breakfast, dressed them as befitted brides and sent them off on their journey. In the same way as before the old man left the girls under the pine. There the girls sat, and kept laughing and saying: “Whatever is mother thinking of? All of a sudden to marry both of us off! As if there were no lads in our village, forsooth! Some rubbishy fellow may come, and goodness knows who he may be!” The girls were wrapped up in pelisses, but for all that they felt the cold. “I say, Praskóvya! The Frost’s skinning me alive. Well, if our bridegroom doesn’t come quick, we shall be frozen to death here!” “Don’t go talking nonsense, Máshka; as if suitors turned up in the forenoon! Why, it’s hardly dinner-time yet!” “But I say, Praskóvya! If only one comes, which of us will he take?” “Not you, you stupid goose!” “Then it will be you, I suppose!” “Of course, it will be me!” “You, indeed! There now, have done talking stuff and treating people like fools!” Meanwhile, Frost had numbed the girls’ hands, so our damsels folded them under their dresses, and then went on quarrelling as before. “What, you fright! You sleepy face! You abominable shrew! Why, you don’t know so much as how to begin weaving; and as to going on with it, you haven’t an idea!”