"No. It's you. Your crossness. I can't have people cross to me, on lonely mountains, just when I'm trying to help them."
His glare of rage turned to a stare of surprise. "Cross? Do you think I was cross to you?"
"Yes. And you just stopped in time, or you would have been worse."
"Oh, I see," he said. "You thought that the 'epithet' was going to be invidious, did you?"
"Naturally."
"Well, it wasn't. I—no, I won't say it! That would be the last folly. But—I wasn't going to be cross. I can't have you think that, whatever happens. Now sit still and be good, while I push again."
I weighed no more than half the thousand pounds now, and the cannon ball had dissolved like a chocolate cream; but the car stood like a rock, fixed, immutable.
"There ought to be half a dozen of me," said the chauffeur. "Look here, little pal, there's nothing else for it; I must trudge off to St. Flour and collect the missing five. Are you afraid to be left here alone?"
Of course I said no; but when he had disappeared, walking very fast, I thought of a large variety of horrors that might happen; almost everything, in fact, from an earthquake to a mad bull. As the sun leaned far down toward the west, the level red light lay like pools of blood in the snow-hollows, and the shadows "came alive," as they used when I was a child lying awake, alone, watching the play of the fire on wall and ceiling.
Long minutes passed, and at last I could sit still no longer. Gaily risking my brother's displeasure, now I knew that he wasn't "cross," I slipped out into the snow again, opened the car door, stood in the doorway, hanging on with one hand, and after much manoeuvring extricated the tea-basket from among spare tyres and luggage on the roof. Then, swinging it down, planted it inside the car, opened it, and scooped up a kettleful of snow. As soon as the big white lump had melted over a rose and azure flame of alcohol, I added more snow, and still more, until the kettle was filled with water. By the time I had warmed and dried my feet on the automatic heater under the floor, the water bubbled; and as jets of steam began to pour from the spout I saw six figures approaching, dark as if they had been cut out in black velvet against the snow.