There was no room to
take exercise, of course, but that, after all, was about the last thing
she was thinking of. A day or two more and she was too fast asleep to do
anything but breathe.
"The winter deepened, and storm after storm scourged the naked plain; and
the snow fell endlessly, till the snowhouse was buried away fairly out of
remembrance. The savage cold swept down noiselessly from outer space,
till, if there had been any such things as thermometers up there, the
mercury would have been frozen hard as steel and the thin spirit to a
sticky, ropy syrup. But even such cold as that could not get down to the
hidden snow-house where the old bear lay so sound asleep."
The Child wagged his head wistfully at the picture, and then cheered
himself with the resolve to build just such a snowhouse in the back yard
that winter--if only there should fall enough snow. But he managed to
hold his tongue about it.
"Just about the middle of the winter," went on Uncle Andy, after a pause
to see if the Child was going to interrupt him again, "the old bear began
to stir a little. She grumbled, and whimpered, and seemed to be having
uneasy dreams for a day or two. At last she half woke up--or perhaps a
little more than half.
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