This explanation was given and received within earshot of a splendid fire on one of those tremendous January mornings when the temperature is perhaps twenty-five degrees below zero, when the very smoke cannot disperse in the frozen atmosphere, and the breath of man and beast returns upon them in snowy particles. Nobody cares to be out of doors, for the air cuts like a knife, and one's garments stiffen like sheet-iron. Linda stands at the window of the little parlour—well she understands now why the hearth was made almost as wide as one side of the room—and looks out on the white world, and on the coppery sun struggling to enlighten the icy heavens, and on that strange phenomenon, the ver glas, gleaming from every tree.
'Now, Mr. Holt, as you have been good enough to attempt an explanation of the cold, perhaps you could tell me the cause of the ver glas? What makes that thin incrustation of ice over the trunk and every twig which has been attracting my admiration these three days? It was as if each tree was dressed in a tight-fitting suit of crystal when the sun succeeded in shining a little yesterday.'
'I imagine that the cause was the slight thaw on Monday, and the freezing of the moisture that then covered the bark and branches into a coat of ice. So I only attempt explanations, Miss Linda.'
'Oh, but it is not your fault if they are unsatisfactory, as I own that of the north-west winds and James's Bay was to me; it is the fault of science. I'm afraid you'll not answer another question which I have, since I am so ungrateful as not to accept everything you say with becoming reverence.'
'Name your question.'
'Why is every fourth day milder than the others? Why may we reckon with almost certainty on a degree of soft weather to-morrow?'
'Those are the tertian intervals, and nobody understands them.'
'Concise and candid, if it doesn't make me wiser; but I'm compensated for that in finding something of which you are equally ignorant with myself, Mr. Holt.'
Remarks of a more superficial character were extorted by the severity of the weather from the inmates of the kitchen.
'Arrah, Miss Libby asthore, wor ye able to sleep one wink last night wid the crakling of the threes? I niver heerd'—