The thing about snow is that it hides things beneath it.  Even the unlikeliest of things.  Right now in Alexander Drive, snow, clean and pure, and the God of equality in that it made every house along the street appear the same by its covering of them, was being melted by the nasty Devil of inequality.  Until today, it had been snowing on and off for a couple of weeks, and the blanket of snow that had covered every inch of ground and rooftop in Alexander Drive was starting to melt. 

The snow on the road had completely melted, but the pavement alongside it was still quite thickly covered in snow and only peppered with odd patches here and there of exposed spots.  These spots made an otherwise healthy pure pavement look as if it had an illness.

Sabrina Ruby was wading home from school along this pavement, almost slipping every now again on the slippery surface of the melting snow.  She was only nine years old.  She should not really have been walking alone on her own, but her mother was so busy lately, trying to earn money, that it wasn't always possible to walk little Sabrina home every day.  Today, Mrs Ruby was helping the local authority deliver hot meals to old people who were stuck in their homes as they were unable to risk walking the slippery pavements.

Talking of pavements, coming towards Sabrina along the pavement she was marching down was a man half jumping and scrambling along in a peculiar fashion. 

Sabrina's eyebrows crumpled further creating a furrow in her brow, and she looked like someone had asked her the hardest question in her life, and maybe they had! She could only mutter, "Wha-?"

"I said, ‘Hello'," said the man bending down so that his face was almost directly opposite Sabrina's, and his grin seemed to spread even wider across his face.

"I'm not supposed to talk to strangers.  My mum said.  And as far as strangers go, you're pretty strange." And at this point in the conversation Sabrina noticed that the man's feet were planted diagonally on melted patches of pavement.  This made her nose wrinkle and her head jolt back a touch.  And her eyebrows increased their intense appearance as they attempted to join together.

"Oh, all right, I shan't tell you then," said the man.

"Tell me what?" demanded Sabrina, and now her eyes were ablaze with curiosity.  Her face was fast becoming a picture of absolute befuddlement.

"I can't.  Your mum said, remember."

"But, is it something important?" asked Sabrina, biting her lip.  Only her ears and tongue were not expressing themselves on her face now. 

"Yes, it certainly is important," emphasised the man.

"Well, go on then, tell me!" cried an exasperated Sabrina, stamping her foot, which sent a wedge of snow flying towards the man's ankle.

The man watched the wedge of snow hit his right ankle and slip down onto his shoe, but showed no particular reaction.  He didn't even move his foot to dislodge the wedge of snow.  He simply answered Sabrina's plea, "No.  You'll have to go home and ask your mum if I can tell you, then come back and tell me that she gave permission.  Then I'll tell you."

"Oh, don't be silly, that would take ages, and my mum might not even be in.  Anyway, you're already talking to me now," said Sabrina, and her face relaxed a little as it dawned on her that she had achieved a small victory.

"All right then, I will make an exception-but you better not tell your mum, just in case.  Well, at least wait until tomorrow, so she can't tell me off."

"Go on then, tell me what you was going to tell me," said Sabrina.

The man carefully waggled the wedge of snow off his buckled shoe, looked Sabrina squarely in the eye, and said: "Be careful where you tread."

"Huh, ‘Be careful where you tread', is that all?" said Sabrina, her eyebrows starting to twitch.  And her ears even managed to wiggle slightly.

"Yes," came a simple yet quite definite reply.

"W-Why?" stuttered Sabrina, her face scrunching up like a paper bag of perplexity.

"Because of the ants."

Sabrina was really confused now and the features of her face began to dance in their bewilderment.  Her eyebrows appeared to be two twin slugs dressed in Russian furred coats engaged in a head-butting competition.  She blurted out, "What you on about, mister?"

"You might squash one," said the man, and his face transformed slowly into one of great concern.

"But there's just snow on the pavement.  There ain't no ants.  What would ants be doing on the snow?"

"Yes," said the man, "but it's melting underneath."

"Huh.  So what's that got to do with anything?" asked Sabrina, and her tongue became part of the dance of confusion in her face as it lopped over her bottom lip.

"Well, where do you think ants go in the winter?"

"Dunno.  Not on holiday, that's for sure," chirped Sabrina, and she relaxed again, pleased with her little joke.

"They stay in bed most of the time," claimed the man.

"And?" questioned Sabrina, determined to get to the bottom of all this nonsense.

The man paused, and then said with utmost confidence, "Well, they sometimes come out for a swim just beneath the melting snow where water is smoothly flowing.  So you might very well squash one or two if you tread without regard to their safety on the surface of the snow."

"Huh! Ants beneath the snow.  Swimming..." exclaimed Sabrina, almost shouting.  She was incredulous, the whole thing was preposterous. 

But the mercurial man took her words in a different way than she intended.

"Yes.  Well done, you're very clever.  Quick on the uptake, so to speak."

The man smiled and patted Sabrina affectionately on her head.  And with that, he slinked quietly away, plotting a course along the pavement ever so carefully on the patches of bare ground amongst the snow.

Sabrina stood watching the man shrink away in the distance, her eyebrows dancing like a pair of wriggling hairy caterpillars.  She stroked her chin and scratched her head.  Finally, she was about to say something to herself aloud, something about the silliness of the man, and how he looked like a giant ant, but her mouth got stuck on opening when she suddenly noticed two ants come rolling out from under the crust of snow into a patch of bare pavement.

Sabrina tiptoed very carefully all the way home trying her level best not to tread on any snow despite the strange looks that came her way.