But , while waiting for breakfast , the small populace of Tanglewood had scratched peepholes with their finger-nails , and saw with vast delight that -- unless it were one or two bare patches on a precipitous hillside , or the gray effect of the snow , intermingled with the black pine forest -- all nature was as white as a sheet . How exceedingly pleasant ! And , to make it all the better , it was cold enough to nip one 's nose short off ! If people have but life enough in them to bear it , there is nothing that so raises the spirits , and makes the blood ripple and dance so nimbly , like a brook down the slope of a hill , as a bright , hard frost . No sooner was breakfast over , than the whole party , well muffled in furs and woollens , floundered forth into the midst of the snow . Well , what a day of frosty sport was this ! They slid down hill into the valley , a hundred times , nobody knows how far ; and , to make it all the merrier , upsetting their sledges , and tumbling head over heels , quite as often as they came safely to the bottom . And , once , Eustace Bright took Periwinkle , Sweet Fern , and Squash-blossom , on the sledge with him , by way of insuring a safe passage ; and down they went , full speed . But , behold , half-way down , the sledge hit against a hidden stump , and flung all four of its passengers into a heap ; and , on gathering themselves up , there was no little Squash-blossom to be found ! Why , what could have become of the child ? And while they were wondering and staring about , up started Squash-blossom out of a snow-bank , with the reddest face you ever saw , and looking as if a large scarlet flower had suddenly sprouted up in midwinter . Then there was a great laugh . When they had grown tired of sliding down hill , Eustace set the children to digging a cave in the biggest snow-drift that they could find . Unluckily , just as it was completed , and the party had squeezed themselves into the hollow , down came the roof upon their heads , and buried every soul of them alive ! The next moment , up popped all their little heads out of the ruins , and the tall student 's head in the midst of them , looking hoary and venerable with the snow-dust that had got amongst his brown curls . And then , to punish Cousin Eustace for advising them to dig such a tumble-down cavern , the children attacked him in a body , and so bepelted him with snowballs that he was fain to take to his heels . So he ran away , and went into the woods , and thence to the margin of Shadow Brook , where he could hear the streamlet grumbling along , under great overhanging banks of snow and ice , which would scarcely let it see the light of day . There were adamantine icicles glittering around all its little cascades . Thence be strolled to the shore of the lake , and beheld a white , untrodden plain before him , stretching from his own feet to the foot of Monument Mountain . And , it being now almost sunset , Eustace thought that he had never beheld anything so fresh and beautiful as the scene .
He was glad that the children were not with him ; for their lively spirits and tumble-about activity would quite have chased away his higher and graver mood , so XXXXX he would merely have been merry -LRB- as he had already been , the whole day long -RRB- , and would not have known the loveliness of the winter sunset among the hills .
If around before from in of on over that up