“Yes, yes, no doubt,” she replied testily; “but there are wakeful old dears to be had, and on a box they are preferable.”
Irais laughed. “You are growing quite amusing, Miss Minora,” she said.
“He isn’t on a box to-day,” said I; “and I never knew him to go to sleep standing up behind us on a sleigh.” But Minora was not to be appeased, and muttered something about seeing no fun in foolhardiness, which shows how alarmed she was, for it was rude.
Peter, however, behaved beautifully on the way home, and Irais and I at least were as happy as possible driving back, with all the glories of the western sky flashing at us every now and then at the end of a long avenue as we swiftly passed, and later on, when they had faded, myriads of stars in the narrow black strip of sky over our heads. It was bitterly cold, and Minora was silent, and not in the least inclined to laugh with us as she had been six hours before.
“Have you enjoyed yourself, Miss Minora?’ inquired Irais, as we got out of the forest on to the chaussée, and the lights of the village before ours twinkled in the distance.
“How many degrees do you suppose there are now?” was Minora’s reply to this question.
“Degrees?—Of frost? Oh, dear me, are you cold,” cried Irais solicitously.
“Well, it isn’t exactly warm, is it?” said Minora sulkily; and Irais pinched me. “Well, but think how much colder you would have been without all that fur you ate for lunch inside you,” she said.
“And what a nice chapter you will be able to write about the Baltic,” said I. “Why, it is practically certain that you are the first English person who has ever been to just this part of it.”
“Isn’t there some English poem,” said Irais, “about being the first who ever burst—”