"There are lots of people besides you," said he, "that don't know when they're well off. But," he continued, seating himself on Bill's chopping log and meditatively cleaning out his pipe bowl with a bit of chip, "there are some youngsters who have a fashion of getting themselves born right in the worst of the cold weather—and that not here in Silverwater neither, but way up north, where weather is weather, let me tell you—where it gets so cold that, if you were foolish enough to cry, the tears would all freeze instantly, till your eyes were shut up in a regular ice jam."
"I wouldn't cry," declared the Child.
"No? But I don't want you to interrupt me any more."
"Of course not," said the Child politely. Uncle Andy eyed him searchingly, and then decided to go on.
"Away up north," he began abruptly—and paused to light his pipe—"away up north, as I was saying, it was just midwinter. It was also midnight—which, in those latitudes, is another way of saying the same thing. The land as far as eye could see in every direction was flat, dead white, and smooth as a table, except for the long curving windrows into which the hard snow had been licked up by weeks of screaming wind. Just now the wind was still. The sky was like black steel sown with diamonds, and the stars seemed to snap under the terrific cold. Suddenly their bitter sparkle faded, and a delicate pale green glow spread itself, opening like a fan, till it covered half the heavens. Almost immediately the center of the base of the fan rolled itself up till the strange light became an arch of intense radiance, the green tint shifting rapidly to blue-white, violet, gold, and cherry rose. A moment more and the still arch broke up into an incalculable array of upright spears of light, pointing toward the zenith, and dancing swiftly from side to side with a thin, mysterious rustle. They danced so for some minutes, ever changing color, till suddenly they all melted back into the fan-shaped glow. And the glow remained, throbbing softly as if breathless, uncertain whether to die away or to go through the whole performance again."
"I know—" began the Child, but checked himself at once with a deprecating glance of apology.
"Except for the dancing wonder of the light," continued Uncle Andy, graciously pretending not to hear the interruption, "nothing stirred in all that emptiness of naked space. Of life there was not the least sign anywhere. This appeared the very home of death and intolerable cold. Yet at one spot, between two little, almost indistinguishable ridges of snow, might have been noticed a tiny wisp of vapor. If one had put his face down close to the snow, so that the vapor came between his eyes and the light, he would have made it out quite distinctly. And it would have certainly seemed very puzzling that anything like steam should be coming up out of that iron-bound expanse."
Now the Child had once seen, in the depth of winter, a wreath of mist arising from the snowy rim of an open spring, and for the life of him he could not hold his tongue.
"It was a boiling spring," he blurted out.
Uncle Andy gazed at him for some seconds in a disconcerting silence, till the Child felt himself no bigger than a minute.