Grandma Burns sat knitting in the winter sunshine one bright morning the week before Christmas. The snow lay deep, and the hard crust glittered like silver. All at once she heard small, unhappy sighs outside her door.
When she opened it, there sat Peter and Jimmy Rice — two very poor little boys — with their faces in their hands, crying.
“My patience!” cried grandma. “What can be the matter with two bright boys on a sunny morning like this?”
“We don’t get to have any fun,” sighed little Peter.
“We can’t go sliding. We haven’t any sleds,” whimpered Jimmy.
“Well, of course boys can’t have a good time without sleds,” said grandma cheerfully. “Let’s look around and see what we can find.”
Her cap-border bobbed in and out behind barrels and boxes in the shed, and among the cobwebs up in the garret — but nothing suitable turned up.
“Hmm! I believe this might do for Pete.” And the dear old lady lifted a large pressed-tin pan down from the top shelf in the pantry. A long, smooth butter tray was found for Jimmy. Grandma shook with laughter to see them skim over the hard crust on their odd little sleds. The boys shouted and waved their arms as they flew past the window.
“I expect they’ll wear clean through them,” she murmured, “but boys must slide — that’s certain.”
And sure enough, the pan was scoured bright as a new silver dollar, and every scrap of red paint was gone from the wooden tray, when Peter and Jimmy brought their sleds back.
Grandma knitted faster than ever the rest of that day, her face bright with smiles. She was planning something. That night she went to see Job Easter, the carpenter down the road. He promised to make two small sleds in exchange for the pair of socks she was finishing.
When the sleds were done, she dyed them red and painted a yellow horse on each one. Grandma called them horses, anyway, though no one else would quite have known it.
Then, the night before Christmas, she pulled her great woollen stockings on over her shoes so she wouldn’t slip, wrapped herself in her hood and cloak, and dragged the little sleds through the snow to Peter and Jimmy’s house.
She hitched them to the door-latch, and went home laughing all the way.
