“Guess I’ve got a few frosted fingers, all right!” Poke announced ruefully.
“Then don’t get too close to the fire at the start,” Sam counseled. “Now a light, Orkney! Touch her off!”
Tom’s chilled hands threatened to bungle the task, but Sam, for reasons of his own, did not offer to assist. He wished Orkney to feel that he was to be counted a full companion in the adventure.
Orkney, sheltering a flickering match in his palm, knelt by the fireplace. Most cautiously he thrust the match into a crevice in the pile of shavings. A tiny flame shot up. It spread swiftly, the yellow tongues licking the heavier wood stacked above the kindling. Sam sprang to the box, and ripped off pieces of the sides. These he deftly placed on the blazing shavings. Steam and smoke began to rise, and, caught in a down-draft from the long unused chimney, belched into the room in a choking cloud.
Sam again raided the broken box, and Orkney followed his example. One on each side of the hearth, they fed the fire with strips of board, till at last the heavier wood was fairly ignited. The chimney by this time was warming to its work, and drawing fiercely.
The Shark, rubbing his nose in curiously experimental fashion, was surveying Poke intently. Suddenly he bent; picked up a handful of snow from a drift under a window; crossed to Master Green, and without warning fell to scrubbing that young man’s nose. Poke with a howl shrank back.
“What the dickens do you think you’re trying to do?” he demanded indignantly.
The Shark shook his head reprovingly. “That’s it—spoil everything! They say that’s the way to treat a frosted nose, but how am I going to find out if you won’t stand still?”
Poke tenderly caressed the feature under discussion. “What do you want to know for?” he inquired.
“Because I guess my nose is nipped, too,” said the Shark calmly. “So I thought I’d see how the treatment worked.”