The Snowman Who Wanted the View
At the bottom of the long sledging hill there stood a snowman called Barnaby. He was large and lumpy, because the children had built him in a hurry before tea. His buttons were three pieces from a game of draughts, two black and one red. His nose was a wooden clothes peg, because the children had eaten his carrot on the way out.
Barnaby did not mind about the carrot. He was a very polite snowman, and he did not mind about much. All afternoon the sledges came down the hill straight at him. Every time one bumped into him, he thought, “Oh, I do beg your pardon,” even though it was never his fault.
The last to go home was Tilly, the smallest of the children. Tilly patted one more handful of snow onto his shoulder and looked up the hill.
“From the top,” Tilly said, “you can see the sun come up over the whole valley at once.”
Then Tilly went home, and Barnaby looked at the top of the hill. He had watched the children up there all day, as small as pepper on a plate, pointing at things he couldn’t see. He had only been a snowman since lunchtime, so he had not had long to want things. But he had never wanted anything as much as this: to stand up there one morning and see what they saw.
Now, you might think a snowman cannot walk. Mostly that is true. But a snowman can walk, very slowly, and even talk, as long as every person in the valley is asleep. The moment the first kitchen lamp comes on, he has to stand still wherever he is. In that valley the first lamp is always the baker’s, because bread takes longer than people think. That is why a snowman is sometimes a little nearer the gate in the morning than you remember leaving him.
So if Barnaby could get to the top before the baker’s lamp came on, he would be standing there when the sun came up.
He waited. One by one the lamps across the valley went out. The last was a little round window in a cottage roof, which was Tilly’s. Then that went out too. The moon was up and the snow was bright. Barnaby set off.
A snowman has nothing to speak of in the way of legs. He goes along the way a sack of flour would go if it had made up its mind. Barnaby shuffled, and shuffled, and in the first hour he got as far as the gate.
“Good evening,” said someone by the gatepost. It was Hare, sitting up very tall, with ears that were even taller.
“Good evening,” said Barnaby. “I beg your pardon for the noise. I am going to the top of the hill to see the sun come up over the whole valley at once.”
Hare looked at the hill, and at Barnaby, and at the hill again. “Not that way, you’re not,” said Hare. “That’s the steep way. Come along by the hedge, where the wind has blown the snow thin.”
So Barnaby went along by the hedge. Hare went ahead, and sat and waited, and went ahead again.
“Is the baker’s lamp on yet?” said Barnaby.
Hare looked down into the valley. “Not yet.”
The hedge ran up to a stone wall with a stile in it. Beside the stile was a gap, and the wind had filled the gap with all the snow it had taken from everywhere else. Hare went over the stile in one hop. Barnaby went into the drift up to his middle button, and stopped.
He pushed. He leaned. He said, “Excuse me,” to the drift, which did not move.
“Is the baker’s lamp on yet?” he said.
“Not yet,” said Hare. “But you are stuck.”
“I am,” said Barnaby. “I’m so sorry.”
“What’s all this?” said a voice, and along the top of the wall came Fox, red as a postbox and very pleased about it. “A snowman in a drift. Well, you’re in luck. I am the strongest animal in this valley. Possibly the next valley as well. Stand back, Hare.”
Fox took the end of Barnaby’s scarf, dug four paws into the snow, and pulled. Nothing happened. Fox pulled harder and said, “Hnnf,” through the scarf. That might have been showing off, and it might have been because Barnaby was very heavy. Then, with a noise like a boot coming out of a puddle, Barnaby came out of the drift and through the gap and sat down hard on the other side.
“Thank you kindly,” said Barnaby.
“Nothing to it,” said Fox, who had to sit down too.
Nobody noticed that the red button had stayed behind in the drift. Remember it, because it turns up again.
They went on. The moon went over. Barnaby shuffled. Hare ran ahead and came back. Fox told Barnaby about all the other heavy things Fox had pulled, and some of them were probably true.
At last Hare sat down and did some sums with one paw.
“Barnaby,” said Hare, “half the night is gone, and we are halfway up. And the top half is steeper.”
“Is the baker’s lamp on yet?” said Barnaby.
“Not yet,” said Hare. “But it will be, long before we get there.”
Barnaby was quiet for a moment. Then he said, very politely, “Well. It is a lovely view from here, too.”
It was not. You could see the stile.
Fox stood up. “Don’t move,” said Fox.
“I can hardly move at all,” said Barnaby. But Fox had already gone, down the hill in a red streak. Soon Fox came racing back up, dragging the children’s old sledge, the one too heavy to take home.
Barnaby sat on it, very carefully. The sledge creaked. Fox took one side of the rope and Hare took the other, and they began to pull him up the hill.
Now, every sledge in the valley knows that sledges go down hills. That is the whole point of a sledge. This one had never in its life been pulled up a hill, and it did not understand. It kept trying to turn round and point the right way, and Fox and Hare kept turning it back. The third time it tried, Fox started laughing and could not stop. Then Hare was laughing too, and so was Barnaby, which in a snowman is mostly a wobble.
“Is the baker’s lamp on yet?” said Barnaby.
“Not yet,” said Hare, rather out of breath. “Pull, Fox.”
“I am pulling,” said Fox. “I am pulling magnificently.”
They came over the top of the hill as the stars were going pale. Barnaby got off the sledge and shuffled to the very edge. He turned to face the place where the sky was going the colour of milk.
“Thank you both,” he said. “I could never have done it on my own.”
“No,” said Fox. “You couldn’t.” But Fox looked very pleased.
“Is the baker’s lamp on yet?” said Barnaby.
Hare looked down. Far below, in the middle of the village, one small window turned yellow.
“Yes,” said Hare. “Just now.”
So Barnaby stood still. It did not matter one bit. He was standing exactly where he wanted to be.
And then the sun came up over the whole valley at once, just as Tilly had said. It came over the far hills and ran across all the snow together: every field, every farm roof, the frozen river, and the baker’s chimney with its first puff of smoke. Then the whole valley was gold. Barnaby saw all of it. He did not miss a single roof.
Hare and Fox had spent all night pulling a sledge the wrong way, which is very tiring. They curled up against the bottom of Barnaby, out of the wind, with Fox’s tail over Hare’s ears. They were asleep before the gold had reached the bottom of the hill.
When the children came out that morning, Barnaby was gone from the bottom of the hill, and so was the old sledge. There was a long, wide shuffle in the snow, and a great many paw prints, and two sledge tracks going up a hill, which nobody had ever seen. Halfway up, in the drift by the stile, Tilly found something red.
At the top stood Barnaby, facing the sunrise, beaming round his clothes peg, with a hare and a fox asleep against him. The children whispered, so as not to wake them. Tilly pressed the red button back into its place.
“You must have wanted to see it very badly,” Tilly said.
Barnaby could not answer, because it was daytime. But he had wanted to, very badly, and he had seen it.
All his life, which was a day and a night, Barnaby had stood at the bottom of the hill and watched the sledges come down at him. That morning he stood at the top, with all three of his buttons on, and watched them go down away from him instead. The old sledge went first, the right way at last, and it went very fast. Every child who went past called good morning to Barnaby, and he thought good morning back to every one of them, very politely. Then he went back to looking at the valley, all of it at once, and he beamed at it all day long.