During the next week, but so gradually that at no moment was it a discovery, it dawned on Archie that he was ill, and that his illness dated from the time when his mouth bled. The knowledge did not in the least depress him, because with it came the absolute certainty in his own mind that he was going to get quite well again. For the most part he did not feel ill, though there was often an uncomfortable period towards evening when he felt sometimes hot and sometimes cold, and one moment would want another coat on, and soon would have liked to throw off all the clothes he had. These odd feelings were accompanied by a sort of extra vividness in his perceptions: he felt tingling and alert, and the lights seemed brighter than their wont. But when this had been more marked than usual in the evening, he always felt very tired next day, and more than once he did not get up at all but had his bed pulled out on to the balcony. Then, as the weeks passed on, there was less of this, and before long he was allowed to tie his toboggan to the back of the sleigh, and be towed up-hill through the pine-wood that climbed the slopes behind the village. That was a delightful experience; on each side stood the snowy trees frosted like a Christmas cake, now almost meeting above the narrow track, and then standing away from it again, so that the deluge of sun poured down as into a pool, while from in front came the jingle of the horse's bells, and from below him the squeak of his runners. Then they came out again on to the ski-ing slopes, where visitors to Grives played the entrancing game of seeing, apparently, who could fall down most often in the most complicated manner. Where the slope was steepest there was erected a sort of platform, so that the runner, flying down the slope above, was shot into the air, touching ground again yards below. Or, on other mornings, when things went well, and there had been no hot-and-cold period the evening before, he tobogganed down the slope below the house to the edge of the skating-rink and sat there in the snow, with everything round frozen hard, yet feeling perfectly warm, so potent were the beams of this ineffable sun through the thin, dry air. Jeannie was learning to skate and progressed, in wobbling half-circles, and shrilly announced that this and no other was the outside edge. Or four of the experts in a railed-off and hallowed place at the end of the huge rink would put down an orange, and proceed to weave a mystic dance in obedience to the shouted orders of one of them. At one moment all four would be swiftly converging on a back-edge to their orange, and, just at the moment when a complicated collision seemed imminent, would somehow change their direction, and, lo, all four were sailing outwards and forwards again in big, sweeping curves. Then there were the hoarse, angry cries of the curlers to listen to, and the pleasant sight of the stone sliding swiftly down the ice and butting, with a hollow chunk, into any other