When the dinner and the blazing fire had filled him so full of comfort
that he was once more ready to encounter the cold, Alec could stay in
the house no longer.
"Where are you going, Alec?" said his mother.
"Into the garden, mamma."
"What can you want in the garden--full of snow?"
"It's just the snow I want, mamma. It won't keep."
And, in another moment, he was under the clear blue night-heaven, with
the keen frosty air blowing on his warm cheek, busy with a wheelbarrow
and a spade, slicing and shovelling in the snow. He was building a hut
of it, after the fashion of the Esquimaux hut, with a very thick
circular wall, which began to lean towards its own centre as soon as it
began to rise. This hut he had pitched at the foot of a flag-staff on
the green-???_lawn_ would be too grand a word for the hundred square feet
in front of his mother's house, though the grass which lay beneath the
snowy carpet was very green and lovely grass, smooth enough for any
lawn. In summer Alec had quite revelled in its greenness and softness,
as he lay on it reading the _Arabian Nights_ and the Ettrick Shepherd's
stories: now it was "white with the whiteness of what is dead;" for is
not the snow just dead water? The flag-staff he had got George Macwha
to erect for him, at a very small outlay; and he had himself fitted it
with shrouds and a cross-yard, and signal halliards; for he had always
a fancy for the sea, and boats, and rigging of all sorts.
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