“Mercy!” Agnes murmured, with a gay little laugh. “Lucky Trix Severn doesn’t come up here. She uses rice powder dreadfully, and folks would think she was being frost-bitten.”
“Uh-huh!” agreed Neale.
“But you haven’t told me how they fish,” said the girl, as they approached nearer to the huts and she was able to walk better.
“Through the ice of course,” he laughed. “Only you don’t see the holes. They are inside the huts.”
“You don’t mean it, Neale?”
“To be sure I mean it! Some of those big shanties house whole families. You see there are children and dogs. They have pot stoves which warm the huts to a certain degree, and on which they cook. And they have bunks built against the walls, with plenty of bedding.”
“Why, I should think they would get their death of cold!” gasped the girl.
“That’s just what they don’t get,” Neale rejoined. “You can bet there are no ‘white plague’ patients here. This atmosphere will kill tubercular germs like a hammer kills a flea.”
“Goodness, Neale!” giggled Agnes. “Did you ever kill a flea with a hammer?”
“Yep. Sand-flea,” he assured her, grinning. “Oh! I’m one quick lad, Aggie.”