“With some of us I suspect the savage would take the upper hand more readily and more rapidly than we suppose possible.”
“The brain would not rebel?”
“You would have to admit glorious physical excitement.”
Anne shivered.
“I cannot realise the possibility of any excitement at all in those desolate homes.”
“Can’t you? I, on the contrary, picture a good deal. Chiefly gloomy, I allow. Think of living for ever next door to your worst enemy—or your best friend! Which would be the most unbearable?”
She took no notice of this cynical speech.
“I could understand the life being endurable in summer, but in winter—winter! And such a winter, with its snows and darkness!”
He demurred.
“So far as I can make out, winter is the most sociable time of the year. You forget that lakes and fjords become the great means of communication; in summer, houses are isolated, owing to the want of roads, but in winter the frozen water serves in their place. No, depend upon it, they have a good time when once they can skate, or strike away on the great snow-shoes you saw by the roadside to-day.”