p grew the cold that Thumb and
Thimble were minded to put on their red metal-hooked jackets when they
went out stick-gathering. They took their knives and nut-sacks over
their shoulders, and muffled and bunched themselves up close, with
cotton-leaves wound round their stomachs, and their skin caps pulled low
over their round frost-enticing ears. And they told Nod to cook them a
smoking hot supper against the dark, for now the snow was so deep it was
a hard matter to find and carry sticks, and they meant to look for more
before matters worsened yet. So Nod at once set to his cookery.

He made up a great fire on the hearthstone. But in spite of its flames,
so louring with gathering snow-clouds was the day that he had to keep
the door down to give him clearer light; and, though he kept scuttling
about, driving out the thieving Brackanolls and Peekodillies that came
nosing into the hut, and scaring away the famished birds that kept
hopping in through the window-hole, even then he could not keep himself
warm. So at last he went to the lower cupboard, under the dangling
Portingal, and took out his sheepskin coat. He put away the dried
kingfisher which his mother had wrapped in the fleece to keep it sweet,
and buttoned the ivory buttons, and skipped about nimbly over his
cooking in that. Then he heaped more wood on--logs and brush and
smoulder-wood--higher and higher, till the flames leapt red, gold, and
lichen-green out of the chimney-hole. Then he said to himself, flinging
yet another armful on: "Now Nod will go down and get some ice to melt
for water to make Sudd-bread." So he went down to the water-spring.

And he stood watching the Mulgars frisking at the edge of the forest,
vain that they should see him with his pole and basket, standing in his
sheep's jacket. He broke up some ice and put in into his basket. Then he
plodded over to his mother's grave and cleared away the hardened snow
that had fallen during the night on her little heap of stones. "Kara,
kara Mutta, Mutta-matutta," he whispered, laying his bony cheek on the
stones--"dearest Mutta!" And while he stood there thinking of his
mother, and of how he would go and bring down a pot of honeycomb for her
death-shadow; and then of his father; and then of the strange journey
they were all going to set out on when Tishnar returned to her
mountains; and then of his Wonderstone; and then of Assasimmon, Prince
of the Valleys, his peacocks and Ummuz-cane, and Ummuz-cane, a