The yellowish white sky had come close up to the house, a dirty blanket let down outside the window. The tree made a black pattern on it. Clear glass beads hung in a row from the black branch, each black twig was tipped with a glass bead. When Jenny opened the window there was a queer cold smell like the smell of the black water in the butt. Thin white powder fluttered out of the blanket and fell. A thick powder. A white fluff that piled itself in a ridge on the window-sill and curved softly in the corner of the sash. It was cold, and melted on your tongue with a taste of window-pane. In the garden Mark and Dank and Roddy were making the snow man. Mamma stood at the nursery window with her back to the room. She called to Mary to come and look at the snow man. Mary was tired of the snow man. She was making a tower with Roddy's bricks while Roddy wasn't there. She had to build it quick before he could come back and take his bricks away, and the quicker you built it the sooner it fell down. Mamma was not to look until it was finished. "Look--look, Mamma! M-m-mary's m-m-made a tar. And it's _not_ falled down!" The tower reached above Jenny's knee. "Come and look, Mamma--" But Mamma wouldn't even turn her head. "I'm looking at the snow man," she said. Something swelled up, hot and tight, in Mary's body and in her face. She had a big bursting face and a big bursting body. She struck the tower, and it fell down. Her violence made her feel light and small again and happy. "Where's the tower, Mary?" said Mamma. "There isn't any tar. I've knocked it down. It was a nashty tar." III. Aunt Charlotte-- Aunt Charlotte had sent the Isle of Skye terrier to Dank. There was a picture of Aunt Charlotte in Mamma's Album. She stood on a strip of carpet, supported by the hoops of her crinoline; her black lace shawl made a pattern on the light gown. She wore a little hat with a white sweeping feather, and under the hat two long black curls hung down straight on each shoulder. The other people in the Album were sulky, and wouldn't look at you. The gentlemen made cross faces at somebody who wasn't there; the ladies hung their heads and looked down at their crinolines. Aunt Charlotte hung her head too, but her eyes, tilted up straight under her forehead, pointed at you. And between her stiff black curls she was smiling--smiling. When Mamma came to Aunt Charlotte's picture she tried to turn over the page of the Album quick. Aunt Charlotte sent things. She sent the fat valentine with the lace paper border and black letters printed on sweet-smelling white satin that Papa threw into the fire, and the white china doll with black hair and blue eyes and no clothes on that Jenny hid in the nursery cupboard.