Gene flopped over like a newly landed fish, grunted some unintelligible words and slept again.
For an hour Thurston lay and listened to the blast and selfishly thanked heaven it was his turn at the cooking.

If the storm kept up like that, he told himself, he was glad he did not have to chop the wood.

He lifted the blanket and sniffed tentatively, then cuddled back into cover swearing that a thermometer would register zero at that very moment on his pillow.
The storm came in gusts as the worst blizzards do at times.

It made him think of the nursery story about the fifth little pig who built a cabin of rocks, and how the wolf threatened: "I'll huff and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down!" It was as if he himself were the fifth little pig, and as if the wind were the wolf.

The wolf-wind would stop for whole minutes, gather his great lungs full of air and then without warning would "huff and puff" his hardest.