The White Groom!

   Twiddling a small object,

    a door-key of peculiar make

   , in his hand, he grinned stolidly at me.

   'She's a rum un, squire, your sister, she be,' chuckled the Sphynx.

   'William,' I said, 'go to Roding, and bring back two nurses, even if they have to hire twenty drags to draw them here. And, William, bring some drugs in the drags.'

   By setting him on this expedition I got rid of the Sphynx. Was he a witness?

    He was certainly acquainted with the nature of an oath!

   OF course when I woke next morning my first thought was of Philippa; my second was of the weather. Always interesting, meteorological observation becomes peculiarly absorbing when it entirely depends on the thermometer whether you shall, or shall not, be arrested as an accessory after the fact, or (as lawyers say)

    post-mortem

   . My heart sank into my boots, or rather (for I had not yet dressed) into my slippers, when I found that, for the first time during sixteen days, the snow had ceased falling. I threw up the sash, the cold air cut me like a knife. Mechanically I threw up the sponge; it struck hard against the ceiling, and fell back a mass of brittle, jingling icicles, so severe was the iron frost that had bound it.

   I gathered up a handful of snow from the window-sill. It crumbled in my fingers like patent camphorated tooth-powder, for which purpose I instantly proceeded to use it. Necessity is the mother of invention. Then I turned, as a final test, to my bath. Oh, joy! it was frozen ten inches thick! No tub for me today! I ran downstairs gleefully, and glanced at the thermometer outside my study window. Hooray, it registered twenty degrees below zero! It registered! That reminded me of my oath! I registered it once more, regardless of legal expenses.

   My spirits rose as rapidly as the glass had fallen. The wind was due east, not generally a matter for indecent exultation.

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