waiting for the coming of Frost. It was not much good talking about these things to Dick, whose mind worked differently. Why, the first thing he had done that morning when they had run out into the glittering snow had been to put a scrap of snow on a bit of glass, so that he could look at the crystals under his microscope. And then he had stuck a bit of stick upright in the snow and made a notch on it, and taken it indoors to borrow Mrs Dixon’s measuring tape to see exactly what depth of snowfall there had been. And now, she knew, he was eager to get to the igloo, to see how the snow covering would stand the heat of the fire inside. Dorothea was thinking more of Captain Nancy. Well, here was the snow she had hoped for. Already, long before they were anywhere near the igloo, Dorothea could almost feel Nancy stirring things up and filling the air with adventure.
“It won’t be very good skating with all this snow,” said Dick, as they stepped out on the smooth white blanket that covered the tarn.
“But it looks a good deal more like the Arctic,” said Dorothea.
The ice was slippery under the snow, but it was easier going on the other side. They waded through the snow-covered bracken, and turned at last into the path up the wood.
“They’ve got a sledge,” cried Dick. “Just look at the tracks.”
Presently they heard a noise as if someone were beating the ground with a cricket bat. People were talking, too, and they heard Nancy’s cheerful, ringing voice. “Go it, skipper! Flatten it in good and hard.”
“It really is like coming to an Eskimo settlement,” said Dorothea.
“I say, just look at it!” cried Dick.
It was worth looking at. The rough stone hut with the roof of old corrugated iron held down by a few big stones, had vanished under the magic of snow that had changed all the rest of the world. Instead, there was a great white mound of snow, a real igloo in which any Eskimo would be very pleased to live. The old stovepipe stuck up through the snow and a steady stream of smoke was pouring from it. Even the rough doorway looked now like the entrance to a snow tunnel. A long sledge with high, trestled runners was standing close by with the last of a load of snow. And there were John and Nancy hard at work with spades, piling more snow on the mound and beating it firmly together.
“Come on, you two,” shouted Nancy as soon as she saw them. “This is what it ought to be like. I told you it only needed a little snow.”
“What’s it like inside?” said Dick.
“Good and stuffy,” said Nancy. “They always are.”
They crawled in, Dorothea first, to find the lantern lit, Susan and Peggy busy with a big iron pot, and a basket full of carrots and potatoes, and Roger and Titty sitting by the fire, putting their boots on.
“Have you gone through the ice?” said Dorothea.
“Only snow,” said Roger, “tobogganing. Dry enough now.”
THE IGLOO IN SNOW
“You wouldn’t have been wet at all if you’d dusted the snow off before letting it melt into your stockings,” said Susan.
Dick took off his spectacles and blinked while he wiped the steam that had settled on them as he crawled in out of the cold air. He put them on again and looked round. It was much better even than he had thought. He had forgotten that sheet of iron that lay across the roof. He had been thinking that the roof would be dribbling all over with melted snow working through the larch poles. But the middle of the igloo was perfectly dry. Of course, nobody could help the steady sizzling in the fireplace as the snow melted round the chimney pipe and found its way down into the fire. Now and again the smoke seemed to think twice about going up the chimney. But the wood smoke had a fine smell and Dick felt sure that in an igloo in Greenland his eyes would have smarted just the same.
“We’re going to sweep the tarn,” said Titty. “Captain Nancy says it’s no good having skating practice till we’ve swept away some of the snow.”
“We’re taking the sledge,” said Roger. “It won’t be only sweeping.”
“What are you going to sweep with?” asked Susan. “Who’s going down to Holly Howe for brooms?”
“Not me,” said Roger. “Nobody is. We’re going to have brooms like the one you and John made in Swallowdale.”
The four younger ones poured out of the igloo into the snow, leaving Peggy and Susan to their cooking.
“We’re ready for those brooms,” said Roger, and John and Nancy left their spades and went off with Roger and Titty, breaking twigs from the bare trees, shaking the snow off, and splicing them firmly in bundles to the ends of stout sticks. Meanwhile Dick and Dorothea took the spades and did a little work in shovelling up snow and adding it to the thickness of those massive walls.
“Shiver my timbers,” said Nancy, when she came back to the clearing and saw the igloo gleaming under the trees, a great shining mound of white snow. “Shiver my timbers, but isn’t it beastly to be going away so soon and leaving it to the sheep.”
“It’s pretty good,” said John, who had been helping to tie the new brooms on the top of the sledge.
“But it’s all coming just too late,” said Nancy. She took her spade from Dorothea, went to the side of the clearing, dug it savagely into the snow, lifted an enormous spadeful, came back and battered it down on the top of the igloo. “It doesn’t bear thinking about,” she said. “The lake was only waiting for this snow to begin to freeze. Everybody says it’s going to freeze all over, and instead of being at the North Pole we’re going to be back at school messing about with Magna Carta . . . ”
John said nothing, but took up his spade and went on with his work.
“Come on,” said Roger, “there’s a rope for each dog, and we can all jump on when it’s going downhill.”
Dorothea grabbed her rope. They were off, the four of them, towing the sledge, jostling each other as they squeezed between the bushes with the sledge at their heels, plumping sideways on the top of it as it threatened to run away from them down a slope, hauling with the ropes over their shoulders as they climbed a rise.
“It’s a very good sledge,” said Dick, “built just like a bridge.”
“It’s a Beckfoot sledge,” said Titty. “We haven’t got one of our own. Nancy and Peggy brought it across when that first lot of snow came.”
“They hunted for another one for us, but they couldn’t find it,” panted Roger.
They charged down through the bracken, and out on the smooth, snow-covered ice. Sweeping began, but did not go on for very long. There was too good a slope between the observatory and the shore of the tarn. It was soon found that if the sledge were started close under the observatory wall it flew down the slope, shot out on the ice, and across it, very nearly to the other side. The sweepers stuck their brooms upright in clumps of heather so as not to lose them. Again and again four dogs with lolling tongues dragged the sledge up to the old barn. Again and again four human beings, astraddle on the sledge, flew down again.
“It’s all good practice,” said Roger.
“You
