which I could find no readier answers than smiles and nods, hiding
my inability to follow up my brilliant beginning under the pretence
of being very busy. By the time the gentlemen had stabled and fed
the horses and were ready, Karl and I between us had arranged a
bright cosy little apartment with a capital tea-dinner on the table.
After this meal there were pipes and toddy, and as I could not
retire, like Mrs. Micawber at David Copperfield's supper party, into
the adjoining bedroom and sit by myself in the cold, I made the best
of the somewhat dense clouds of smoke with which I was soon
surrounded, and listened to the fragmentary plans for the next day.
Then we all separated for the night, and in two minutes I was fast
asleep in a little room no bigger than the cabin of a ship, with an
opossum rug on a sofa for my bed and bedding.

It was cold enough the next morning, I assure you: so cold that it
was difficult to believe the statement that all the gentlemen had
been down at daybreak to bathe in the great lake which spread like
an inland sea before the bay-window of the little sitting room.
This lake, the largest of the mountain chain, never freezes, on
account partly of its great depth, and also because of its sunny
aspect. Our destination lay far inland, and if we meant to have a
good long day's skating we must start at once. Such a perfect day
as it was! I felt half inclined to beg off the first day on the
ice, and to spend my morning wandering along the rata-fringed shores
of Lake Coleridge, with its glorious enclosing of hills which might
fairly be called mountains; but I feared to seem capricious or lazy,
when really my only difficulty was in selecting a pleasure. The sun
had climbed well over the high barriers which lay eastwards, and was
shining brightly down through the quivering blue ether overhead; the
frost sparkled on every broad flax-blade or slender tussock-spine,