I HAD missed “the enjoyment of that bad weather”—as one of our workmen called it, when he drew his wages _gratis_—through having too much at the outset. There had been at least six weeks of frost, some of it very intense; and it was said by those who make a study of such things, that Christmas Day, 1860, was the coldest day known in the south of England, since Christmas Day, 1796. And but for a break at the end of the year, when a sudden thaw set in before the steady return of low temperature, it is likely that the Thames would have held an ice-fair above London Bridge; as in 1814, and as threatened again in 1838. But the removal of old London Bridge has made perhaps a great difference in that matter. One of the reasons why I could not get rid of the chill that struck into my system, was perhaps the renewed attack of cold every night through all that bitter time. For in old-fashioned houses like my uncle’s, there was no fireplace in the bedrooms; and a frying-pan full of hot embers, our Tabby’s device, used to set us a-coughing. Every now and again I seemed to hear, when I called my wits together, the crisp light glint of the gliding skate, the hollow heel-tap of the gliddering slide, and the sharp, merry shouts of boys and men dashing at the hockey-bung in the jagged, slippery huddle. Then more snow fell, and the ice grew treacherous, and all was mantled in a white hush again. But now the days were milder, and the ice had broken up, and the roads were full of quagmires as they always are, when a long frost has gone to the bottom of their metal; and everybody said that it was very brave of my good Aunt Parslow to pay a guinea for a fly, and come all the way from Leatherhead, to see if I was still alive. And it was not for the sake of being kept warm on the road—though that was the reason she assigned for it—that she obtained permission from Mr. Chalker to bring his pretty daughter on the visit she was paying. Miss Parslow was long past the age of lovemaking, and had made a sound investment of her affections among the grateful canine race; but none the less for that she felt an interest in watching the progress, or it might even be the backslidings, of her own species in the fine old game. And Sam Henderson had conquered all her prejudice against him, by riding over more than once in the worst state of the roads, when no wheels could pass over them, for no other purpose, as he positively avowed, than to comfort her kind heart about her dear nephew’s illness.