Page:An Unfinished Song.djvu/140

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AN UNFINISHED SONG
135

"I haven't clients to bother me day and night."

"Well then, tell us how the ice looked."

"Oh, no doubt, I could do that, but am I here to be examined?"

"Very well, let me do it for you. Beautifully, faultlessly white, the sublimest, the beautifullest, the grandest."

My sister checked him.

"Now really, don't tease me any more," she said.

The doctor turned towards my brother-in-law.

"I see you are not satisfied with twenty-four hours a day, you want an extra half-hour or two. You monopolise the whole conversation."

"I beg your pardon," was the meek reply. "I will be as quiet as a mouse."

"That is good," said his wife. "Now you keep quiet and we will talk. The ice, well, it did not look like the ice we use in our drinking water. On the outer wall of the icehouse of which we are speaking it looked like frozen salt, and the inner wall was smooth and soft like wax, but it was somewhat blackish, having come into contact with the earth."