"It won't lie," said the Bearskin. "Shall we draw up the hood?"
They drew it up, but the thin man, huddling himself in the corner of the back seat, insisted on "side-curtains as well."
"Then I'm sorry. Will you get out? They are under the seat."
"Oh, never mind, my dear fellow," said Blackberry-Eyes.
"No, no. One ought to keep the warmth of food within one."
And the other got out, and stood shivering while the Bearskin and Fanny pulled rugs and baskets and cushions out into the road that they might lift the back seat and find the curtains.
"Oh, how torn!" exclaimed the thin man bitterly, as he saw her drape the car with leather curtains whose windows of mica had long since been cracked and torn away. The snow was hissing on the radiator and melting on the road, and there seemed no wind left anywhere to drive the weight of the mauve cloud further across the sky. It hung solid and low above them, so that between the surface of the earth and the floor of the sky there was only a foggy tunnel in which the road could be seen a few yards ahead.
As they drove forward the windscreen became filmed with melting snow. Fanny unscrewed it and tilted it open, and the Bearskin fumbled unhappily at his collar to close every chink and cranny in his mossy hide.
They were climbing higher and higher across an endless plateau, and at last a voice called from the back, "We must look at the map." It was a voice of doubt and distrust that any road could be right road which held so much discomfort.
Fanny stopped and pulled her map from behind her back, where she was keeping it dry. "It's all right," she showed them, leaning over the back and holding the map towards them. Then she discovered that the back seat was empty, and her clients were huddled among the petrol tins and rugs upon the floor.