Winter Holiday. Arthur Ransome

a slab of icing on a slice of cake along the stone wall of the garden. The grey outhouses had thick white roofs. And then there was this magical brightness in the air. At home, in the town, Dorothea had seen snow more than once, where it lay for a few hours in the streets, growing grimier from the smoke, until it was swept into dirty heaps along the gutters. She had never seen anything like this.

      She listened. It could not be late, or Mrs Dixon would have waked her, even if Dick had not. Ah! There was the clink of the hot-water can, and Mrs Dixon’s counting, “Eight and nine and ten and eleven and twelve and that’s the dozen,” as she reached the landing.

      “Well, and what do you think of this?” said Mrs Dixon. “It’s been snowing half the night.”

      Dorothea could hardly say what she thought. She was thinking of people looking out of windows at Holly Howe, and of Nancy and Peggy rowing across the lake, from one white shore to another. This was just what they had wanted.

      Dick came thundering at her door. “It’ll be a real igloo today,” he said. “I wonder if it’ll be cold enough for the snow not to melt when they’ve got the fire going inside. I say, there are tracks in the snow. I can see a bird’s, thrush, I think, and Roy’s across the yard, and two rabbit tracks in the field.”

      “Pity you’re going so soon,” said Mrs Dixon. “With a fall of snow like this, and no wind, we’ll be having ice on the lake if the frost holds.”

      “If only we could,” said Dorothea.

      “Where’s Mr Dixon?” she asked a little later, coming downstairs and finding nobody but Mrs Dixon about.

      “Up on the fell,” said Mrs Dixon. “Him and Silas, looking for outlaying sheep. Snow’s good for the land, right enough, but it’s a peck of trouble when you’ve sheep on the fells, and we’ve more’n a few.”

      After breakfast, Dorothea and Dick packed their knapsacks (with skates, milk bottle, cake and sandwiches) and set off for the observatory. The snow came up to the top of their boots as they crossed the road, and there was little of the cart track to be seen, but Silas and Mr Dixon had gone that way, looking after their sheep, and Dorothea and Dick stepped carefully in those footprints, so very much larger than their own. Close to the barn the big, deep prints turned away to the right, straight up towards the high fells.

      “I thought so,” cried Dick, looking down at the gabled end of Holly Howe, white and today hard to see against the snow-laden trees and the white fields above and below it. “I thought so. It’s a diamond all by itself. It’ll be something like an igloo today. Come on, Dot.” He climbed the steps to the loft, leaving sharp footprints on each step, and came down again with the whitewashed wooden square John had left.

      “I’ve got to hoist one too, to show we’ve got the message, but they’ve probably started already.”

      He hooked the square on the halyard by a hole in one of its corners and hoisted it up the wall of the barn. It hung there on the dark grey wall like a big white diamond.

      “Come along,” he said, anxious to see what it looked like from a little distance.

      But Dorothea could not make herself hurry. The snow had changed everything. Almost she felt like walking on tiptoe through this new sparkling world. A whole jumble of things was in her mind, Good King Wenceslaus, the Ice Queen, Ib and Little Christina, and the little girl who sat on her wedding chest in the winter forest, waiting for the coming of Frost. It was not much good talking about these things to Dick, whose mind worked differently. Why, the first thing he had done that morning when they had run out into the glittering snow had been to put a scrap of snow on a bit of glass, so that he could look at the crystals under his microscope. And then he had stuck a bit of stick upright in the snow and made a notch on it, and taken it indoors to borrow Mrs Dixon’s measuring tape to see exactly what depth of snowfall there had been. And now, she knew, he was eager to get to the igloo, to see how the snow covering would stand the heat of the fire inside. Dorothea was thinking more of Captain Nancy. Well, here was the snow she had hoped for. Already, long before they were anywhere near the igloo, Dorothea could almost feel Nancy stirring things up and filling the air with adventure.

      “It won’t be very good skating with all this snow,” said Dick, as they stepped out on the smooth white blanket that covered the tarn.

      “But it looks a good deal more like the Arctic,” said Dorothea.

      The ice was slippery under the snow, but it was easier going on the other side. They waded through the snow-covered bracken, and turned at last into the path up the wood.

      “They’ve got a sledge,” cried Dick. “Just look at the tracks.”

      Presently they heard a noise as if someone were beating the ground with a cricket bat. People were talking, too, and they heard Nancy’s cheerful, ringing voice. “Go it, skipper! Flatten it in good and hard.”

      “It really is like coming to an Eskimo settlement,” said Dorothea.

      “I say, just look at it!” cried Dick.

      It was worth looking at. The rough stone hut with the roof of old corrugated iron held down by a few big stones, had vanished under the magic of snow that had changed all the rest of the world. Instead, there was a great white mound of snow, a real igloo in which any Eskimo would be very pleased to live. The old stovepipe stuck up through the snow and a steady stream of smoke was pouring from it. Even the rough doorway looked now like the entrance to a snow tunnel. A long sledge with high, trestled runners was standing close by with the last of a load of snow. And there were John and Nancy hard at work with spades, piling more snow on the mound and beating it firmly together.

      “Come on, you two,” shouted Nancy as soon as she saw them. “This is what it ought to be like. I told you it only needed a little snow.”

      “What’s it like inside?” said Dick.

      “Good and stuffy,” said Nancy. “They always are.”

      They crawled in, Dorothea first, to find the lantern lit, Susan and Peggy busy with a big iron pot, and a basket full of carrots and potatoes, and Roger and Titty sitting by the fire, putting their boots on.

      “Have you gone through the ice?” said Dorothea.

      “Only snow,” said Roger, “tobogganing. Dry enough now.”

      THE IGLOO IN SNOW

      “You wouldn’t have been wet at all if you’d dusted the snow off before letting it melt into your stockings,” said Susan.

      Dick took off his spectacles and blinked while he wiped the steam that had settled on them as he crawled in out of the cold air. He put them on again and looked round. It was much better even than he had thought. He had forgotten that sheet of iron that lay across the roof. He had been thinking that the roof would be dribbling all over with melted snow working through the larch poles. But the middle of the igloo was perfectly dry. Of course, nobody could help the steady sizzling in the fireplace as the snow melted round the chimney pipe and found its way down into the fire. Now and again the smoke seemed to think twice about going up the chimney. But the wood smoke had a fine smell and Dick felt sure that in an igloo in Greenland his eyes would have smarted just the same.

      “We’re going to sweep the tarn,” said Titty. “Captain Nancy says it’s no good having skating practice till we’ve swept away some of the snow.”

      “We’re taking the sledge,” said Roger. “It won’t be only sweeping.”

      “What are you going to sweep with?” asked Susan. “Who’s going down to Holly Howe for brooms?”

      “Not me,” said Roger. “Nobody is. We’re going to have brooms like the one you and John made in Swallowdale.”

      The four younger ones poured out of the igloo into the snow, leaving Peggy and Susan to their