When dinner-time came we had to be dragged in by the scruff of
our necks. The short armistice over, the combat was resumed; but
presently Charlotte and I, a little weary of contests and of
missiles that ran shudderingly down inside one's clothes, forsook
the trampled battle-field of the lawn and went exploring the
blank virgin spaces of the white world that lay beyond. It
stretched away unbroken on every side of us, this mysterious
soft garment under which our familiar world had so suddenly
hidden itself. Faint imprints showed where a casual bird had
alighted, but of other traffic there was next to no sign; which
made these strange tracks all the more puzzling.

We came across them first at the corner of the shrubbery, and
pored over them long, our hands on our knees. Experienced
trappers that we knew ourselves to be, it was annoying to be
brought up suddenly by a beast we could not at once identify.

"Don't you know?" said Charlotte, rather scornfully. "Thought
you knew all the beasts that ever was."

This put me on my mettle, and I hastily rattled off a string of
animal names embracing both the arctic and the tropic zones, but
without much real confidence.

"No," said Charlotte, on consideration; "they won't any of
'em quite do. Seems like something LIZARDY. Did you say a
iguanodon? Might be that, p'raps. But that's not British, and
we want a real British beast. _I_ think it's a dragon!"