My name is Jack Frost, and I have a story to tell. If you don't know who I am, ask my friend North East Wind, Esq., and he will tell you, and whistle a tune which he made up about me. I am Painter to her Beauty Mab, Queen of the Faeries. She gives me plenty of work to do; in the summer-time I go North, like other artists, to take sketches, but when the winter comes then I come back and paint my pictures. I paint chiefly on glass, though sometimes on pottery, the night is the time I like best to work in, for in the day-time the sun tries to put some colour into the paintings, which spoils them; white is the only colour I ever use. I was going to tell you, however, a story about what I saw the other night. Queen Mab sent a snow-flake to me with a message. I was to paint eight large squares of glass in a certain window of a certain house. I might paint what I chose only it must be done in good season, for the Queen was to visit the painting when it was finished. So I was at the glass and at work early--'twas only a little after sundown; my friend, North East Wind, jolly old fellow! was whistling a tune right merrily as I handled my brush. There was a light inside the room, and I could see everything that was going on there; I could hear everything too, for there was a crack in one of the panes of glass; these cracks spoil my paintings--I never can make any mark on the glass close to them--but how ever, here was this crack, and I could make out through it everything that was going on. A nurse was putting a little girl named Milly to bed, and they talked incessantly. Milly was to have a party the next day, which was her sixth birth-day; it was to be her first party. All things had been made ready for it; she had had a new dress, white with red spots like wafers all over it, and she was to wear a red sash and bronze kid slippers. Twelve little girls had been invited, but only eleven were sure to come; Susan Peabody was sick, and might not be there. All this I heard, and I saw Milly tucked up in bed and left to go to sleep. Then I worked with a will, for I had no time to spare. I begged my jolly friend, N. E. Wind, to be off with himself, as he interrupted my work. So he gave one long wheugh! and away he went. At twelve o'clock my painting was done. It was the best piece I had done in a long while; one square of glass in particular was superb, though I say it that ought not say it. It was a picture of the palace of Queen Mab; towers and spires were there, hung with crystal bells; the castle was set round with trees, some slim, shooting up above the towers, some stunted throwing out their branches in every direction. The whole glittered most brilliantly. There was a network over all, as if a spider had spun silver threads in front of it. I very often put that on afterwards to add to the effect, though my friend North East Wind pooh-poohs at it; but he knows nothing about art.