"We will risk _that_. Ice-cream always pays. Ours does, at any rate."

"Snow is coming, I guess, for it looks like a change in the weather."

A change, indeed, was setting in. The river indicated it. It was as smooth
and glassy as if Aunt Stanshy's flat iron had been over it and pressed
every wrinkle and ripple down. The air was light. The smoke from the
houses and the steam from the only tug that the commerce of the town could
afford to support fell, and fluttered downward in thin veils. Overhead
there was a mass of gray cloud halting directly above the town, and
looking too lazy ever to stir again.

"Storm comin'!" declared Simes Badger to all his cronies at Silas
Trefethen's store. "Wind is sou' already."

It did not stay "sou'," but swung around to the east, then worked into the
north-east, and then all through the night the wind was sifting
cotton-wool down on all the streets as if carpeting them, on all the roofs
as if blanketing them, into all the cracks in the walls of houses and
barns as if it would chink them up and make them tight for winter.

Chancing to look out of the window as soon as he was awake the morning
after the storm, Charlie shouted,

"Ice-cream!"

"Yes, all you want," said Aunt Stanshy, who, leaving her coffee-pot, her
pan of fried potatoes, and batch of biscuit on the kitchen stove, had
mounted the stairs to wake the sleepy Charlie.