



Produced by Melissa McDaniel, Barry Abrahamsen, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
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available by The Internet Archive)









[Illustration: Frontispiece THE TWO WAYS.]


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                         DOWN THE SNOW STAIRS;

                                  OR,

                    FROM GOOD-NIGHT TO GOOD-MORNING.

                           BY ALICE CORKRAN,

           Author of “Margery Merton’s Girlhood,” etc., etc.

               WITH SIXTY ILLUSTRATIONS BY GORDON BROWNE.


                    [Illustration: Publisher’s Logo]


                               NEW YORK:
                         A. L. BURT, PUBLISHER.


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                               CONTENTS.

                               ----------


               CHAP.                                 PAGE

                  I. Christmas Eve                      1

                 II. Kitty and Johnnie                 17

                III. Down the Snow Stairs              34

                 IV. Naughty Children Land             48

                  V. “To Daddy Coax’s House”           67

                 VI. Daddy Coax                        85

                VII. On the Other Side of the         112
                       Stream

               VIII. Pictures in the Fog              122

                 IX. Love Speaks                      151

                  X. In the Wood                      162

                 XI. Kitty Dances with Strange        177
                       Partners

                XII. “Eat or Be Eaten”                192

               XIII. Play-Ground, and After           206

                XIV. “I and Myself”                   215

                 XV. Was it Johnnie’s Face?           229

                XVI. At the Gate                      242


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                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

                               ----------


                                                  PAGE

                  The Two Ways                   FRONTISPIECE.

                  Restless Kitty                     1

                  Johnnie and His Art Treasures      5

                  The Snow-Man                      16

                  Down the Wide Staircase           16

                  Kitty’s Tears                     22

                  Sliding Down the Balusters        28

                  The Snow-Man Visits Kitty         35

                  Following the Snow-Man            39

                  The Drollest Creature             40

                  Kitty and the Elf                 45

                  Broken Toy Land                   49

                  A Dismal Chorus                   51

                  “A black creature glared at       54
                  her”

                  A Disagreeable Acquaintance       56

                  Little Cruel-Heart                61

                  A Good Fight                      64

                  The Song of the Sillies           69

                  “I am not vain”                   73

                  A Jam-Tart Too Many               78

                  Kitty and Daddy Coax              87

                  A Lively Wig                      89

                  Sweetening the Fury               95

                  All Jam and No Powder             98

                  Little Spitfire                  100

                  The Fight for the Flute          108

                  The Shadow of the Rod            111

                  “Peering out of the mist”        114

                  The White-Robed Stranger         119

                  Entangled in the Web             123

                  The Tramp of Weary Feet          126

                  Ice-Children                     130

                  The Right One to Kick            133

                  A Hard Lesson                    139

                  “Oh, to be hungry again!”        141

                  Faces! Faces!—a World of         145
                  Faces!

                  The Cry for the Kiss             152

                  Kitty’s Guardian Child           155

                  Kitty’s Naughty-Self Goblin      161

                  The Hanging Dwarf                166

                  Goblin Sloth                     169

                  “Real yawning”                   172

                  “At one bound she sprang         176
                  across”

                  The Frog-Like One                178

                  Step, Wriggle, and Bow           181

                  The Little Courtiers             185

                  Kitty’s Musings                  188

                  Apple-Pie Corner                 193

                  The Boy with the Suetty Voice    199

                  Struggling Onward                204

                  I and Myself                     217

                  Mr. Take-care-of-himself         220

                  “A <DW36> like Johnnie”         226

                  A Merry Game                     232

                  The Goblin Crew                  236

                  Out of the Mist                  241

                  At the Locked Gate               244

                  The Mist of Punishment Land      248

                  Home Again                       251

                  “It is a secret”                 254


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[Illustration]




                               CHAPTER I

                             CHRISTMAS EVE.


TOSS! toss! from one side to the other; still Kitty could not sleep.

The big round moon looked in at the window, for the curtain had not been
drawn, and it made a picture of the window on the wall opposite, and
showed the pattern on the paper; nosegays of roses, tied with blue
ribbon; roses and knots of blue ribbon; like no roses Kitty had ever
seen, and no blue ribbon she had ever bought.

Toss! toss! toss! she shut her eyes not to see the picture of the window
on the wall or the roses and the blue ribbon, yet she could not go to
sleep. It was always toss! toss! from one side to the other.

It was Christmas Eve, and outside the world was white with snow.

“It had been a dreadful day,” Kitty said to herself. “The last nine days
had been dreadful days, and this had been the dreadfulest of all.”

Her brother Johnnie was very ill; he was six years old, just two years
younger than herself; but he was much smaller, being a tiny <DW36>.
Next to her mother Kitty loved him more than anybody in the whole world.

All through those “dreadful” nine days she had not been allowed to see
him. She had many times knelt outside his door, and listened to his
feeble moan, but she had not been permitted to enter his room.

That morning she had asked the doctor if she could see Johnnie, as it
was Christmas Eve. The doctor had shaken his head and patted her hair.
“He must not be excited; he is still very ill. If he gets better after
to-night—then—perhaps!” he said.

She had overheard what he whispered to Nurse. “To-night will decide; if
he pulls through to-night.”

All day Kitty had thought of those words.

“To-night, if he pulls through to-night.” What did they mean? did they
mean that Johnnie might die to-night?

She had waited outside Johnnie’s room; but her mother had said, “No; you
cannot go in;” and Nurse had said, “You will make Johnnie worse if you
stand about, and he hears your step.”

Kitty’s heart was full of misery. “It was unkind not to let me in to see
Johnnie,” she said again and again to herself. She loved him so much!
She loved him so much! Then there was a “dreadful” reason why his
illness was worse for her to bear than for any one else. Kitty
remembered that ten days ago there had been a snow-storm; when the snow
had ceased she had gone out and made snowballs in the garden, and she
had asked her mother if Johnnie might come out and make snow-balls also.

“On no account,” her mother had answered; “Johnnie is weak; if he caught
a cold it would be very bad for him.”

Kitty remembered how the next morning she had gone into the meadow
leading out of the garden. There the gardener had helped her to make a
snow-man; and they had put a pipe into his mouth. She had danced around
the snow-man, and she had longed for Johnnie to see it.

Kitty remembered how she had run indoors and found Johnnie sitting by
the fire in his low crimson chair, his tiny crutch beside him, his
paint-box on the little table before him. He was painting a yellow sun,
with rays all round it.

It was Johnnie’s delight to paint. He would make stories about his
pictures; he told those stories to Kitty only. They were secrets. He
kept his pictures in an old tea-chest which their mother had given him,
and it had a lock and key. Johnnie kept all his treasures there—all his
little treasures, all his little secrets. They were so pretty and so
pitiful! They were his tiny pleasures in life. Johnnie was painting
“Good Children Land” and “Naughty Children Land.” Good Children Land he
painted in beautiful yellow gamboge; Naughty Children Land in black
India ink.


[Illustration]


Kitty in her bed to-night seemed to see the whole scene, and to hear her
own and Johnnie’s voices talking. She had rushed in, and Johnnie had
looked up, and he had begun to tell her the story of his picture.

“Look, Kitty!” he had said; “this is the portrait of the naughtiest
child, the very, very naughtiest that ever was; and he has come into
Good Children Land—by mistake, you know. Look! he has furry legs like a
goat, and horns and a tail, just because he is so naughty; but he is
going to become good. I will paint him getting good in my next picture.”

Kitty remembered how she had just glanced at the picture; “the
naughtiest child that ever was” looked rather like a big blot with a
tail, standing in front of the yellow sun. But she had been so full of
the thought of the snow-man that she had begun to speak about him at
once.

“Oh, Johnnie!” she had said, skipping about first on one foot, then on
the other. “The gardener and I have made such a snow-man. He’s as big as
the gardener, and ever so much fatter; and he’s got hands, but no legs,
only a stump, you know; and we’ve put a pipe into his mouth.”


[Illustration: THE SNOW-MAN.—Page 6.]


At this description Johnnie’s eyes had sparkled, and he had cried, “Oh!
I wish I could see him!”

Then she had gone on to say, still skipping about: “He has two holes for
his eyes, and they seem to look at me; and his face is as round as a
plate; he just looks like the man in the moon smoking a pipe.”

This description had roused Johnnie’s excitement, and he had stretched
an eager little hand toward his crutch.

“Please take me to see him! please take me to see him!” he had
entreated.

Kitty remembered that she had hesitated. “I am afraid it would give you
a cold,” she had said, looking at Johnnie with her head on one side.

“I shall put on my hat and comforter,” Johnnie had replied, grasping his
crutch.

Still, she remembered, she had hesitated.

Her mother had said, “Johnnie must not go out in the snow.” But then
Kitty had thought: “The sun is shining; and it will be for a moment
only.” She did so long for Johnnie to see the snow-man, and he wished it
so much. She remembered she had thought: “It can do him no harm just for
a moment.”

She had helped Johnnie on with his overcoat, and wrapped his comforter
round him, and put on his hat, and together they had gone out. There was
no