"Next day the snow began to fall, large, slow flakes drifting on a light wind. The sky was leaden and the earth crouched beneath it drained of beauty. All the light and loveliness were in the snow itself, in the movement and glimmer of the flakes large as wild white roses, in the tide of whiteness flowing slowly over the dark earth, like moonlight or the surf of a soundless sea.... After [Mary] had rescued her six snowdrops from the garden she stayed indoors and gazed out of first one window and then another, watching how the whiteness outlined the church windows and the ledges of the tower, how it lay on the shoulders of her cupid in the garden and crept along the branches of the apple tree outside the parlour window. There were sounds at first, Bess barking, the early return of the next door car bringing the children home from school before the roads worsened, voices of people crossing the green, but with the approach of twilight they one by one fell away. Even the light wind dropped and no longer murmured in the chimney."
~from The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge