As Fanny stooped to wind up the handle the first snowflake, soft and wet
and heavy, melted on her ear.
"It won't lie," said the Bearskin. "Shall we draw up the hood?"
They drew it up, but the thin man, huddling himself in the corner of the
back seat, insisted on "side-curtains as well."
"Then I'm sorry. Will you get out? They are under the seat."
"Oh, never mind, my dear fellow," said Blackberry-Eyes.
"No, no. One ought to keep the warmth of food within one."
And the other got out, and stood shivering while the Bearskin and Fanny
pulled rugs and baskets and cushions out into the road that they might
lift the back seat and find the curtains.
"Oh, how torn!" exclaimed the thin man bitterly, as he saw her drape the
car with leather curtains whose windows of mica had long since been
cracked and torn away. The snow was hissing on the radiator and melting
on the road, and there seemed no wind left anywhere to drive the weight
of the mauve cloud further across the sky. It hung solid and low above
them, so that between the surface of the earth and the floor of the sky
there was only a foggy tunnel in which the road could be seen a few
yards ahead.
As they drove forward the windscreen became filmed with melting snow.
Fanny unscrewed it and tilted it open, and the Bearskin fumbled unhappily
at his collar to close every chink and cranny in his mossy hide.
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