But they do give him information that is both important and novel.

They advance him one step in his inquiry.

Out of the sky means, to him, from a great height.

The words give him to understand that the flakes are not formed where they first come into his view, but that they descend from a higher region.

After reflecting on this idea a moment, he asks, we will suppose, "How high in the sky, mother ?" Now, perhaps, a mother might think that there was no possible answer to be given to such a question as this except that "she does not know;" inasmuch as few persons have any accurate ideas of the elevation in the atmosphere at which snow-clouds usually form.