muggy warmth and foggy mists, but here was a year when traditions
were fulfilled in the most reckless manner, and all the 1892 babies
were treated to a present of snow on so fine a scale that certainly
for the rest of their days they will go about saying: "Ah, you
should see the winters we used to have when we were children. . ."

The snow began on the very day after Jeremy's birthday, coming down
doubtfully, slowly, little grey flakes against a grey sky, then
sparkling white, then vanishing flashes of moisture on a wet,
unsympathetic soil. That day the snow did not lie; and for a week it
did not come again; then with a whirl it seized the land, and for
two days and nights did not loosen its grip. From the nursery
windows the children watched it, their noses making little rings on
the window-pane, their delighted eyes snatching fascinating glimpses
of figures tossed through the storm, cabs beating their way, the
rabbit-skin man, the milkman, the postman, brave adventurers all,
fighting, as it seemed, for their very lives.

For two days the children did not leave the house, and the natural
result of that was that on the second afternoon tempers were, like
so many dogs, straining, tugging, pulling at their chains.

It could not be denied that Jeremy had been tiresome to everyone
since the afternoon when he had heard the news of his going to
school next September. It had seemed to him a tremendous event, the
Beginning of the End. To the others, who lived in the immediate
present, it was a crisis so remote as scarcely to count at all. Mary
would have liked to be sentimental about it, but from this she was
sternly prevented. There was then nothing more to be said. . .