this season of the year. I used to go under the stove, and lie down quite
beneath it. Ah, I still dream of that stove. Away, away!”
“Does a stove look beautiful?” asked the Snow Man, “is it at all like
me?”
“It is just the reverse of you,” said the dog; “it’s as black as a crow, and
has a long neck and a brass knob; it eats firewood, so that fire spurts out of
its mouth. We should keep on one side, or under it, to be comfortable. You
can see it through the window, from where you stand.”
Then the Snow Man looked, and saw a bright polished thing with a
brazen knob, and fire gleaming from the lower part of it. The Snow Man
felt quite a strange sensation come over him; it was very odd, he knew not
what it meant, and he could not account for it. But there are people who are
not men of snow, who understand what it is. “And why did you leave her?”
asked the Snow Man, for it seemed to him that the stove must be of the
female sex. “How could you give up such a comfortable place?”
“I was obliged,” replied the yard-dog. “They turned me out of doors, and
chained me up here. I had bitten the youngest of my master’s sons in the
leg, because he kicked away the bone I was gnawing. ’Bone for bone,’ I
thought; but they were so angry, and from that time I have been fastened
with a chain, and lost my bone. Don’t you hear how hoarse I am. Away,
away! I can’t talk any more like other dogs. Away, away, that is the end of it
all.”
But the Snow Man was no longer listening. He was looking into the
housekeeper’s room on the lower storey; where the stove stood on its four
iron legs, looking about the same size as the Snow Man himself. “What a
strange crackling I feel within me,” he said. “Shall I ever get in there? It is
an innocent wish, and innocent wishes are sure to be fulfilled. I must go in
there and lean against her, even if I have to break the window.”
“You must never go in there,” said the yard-dog, “for if you approach the
stove, you’ll melt away, away.”
