"It is one of the things they make for presentation in the old country." Maud Barrington noticed the absence of any attempt at explanation, and having considerable pride of her own, was sensible of a faint approval.
"You are making slow progress," she said, with a slight but perceptible difference in her tone.

"Now, you can have eaten nothing since breakfast." Winston said nothing, but by and by poured a little of the spirit into a rusty can, and the girl, who understood why he did so, felt that it covered several of his offenses.

"Now," she said graciously, "you may smoke if you wish to." Winston pointed to the few billets left and shook his head.

"I'm afraid I must get more wood." The roar of wind almost drowned his voice, and the birch logs seemed to tremble under the impact of the blast, while Maud Barrington shivered as she asked, "Is it safe ?" "It is necessary," said Winston, with the little laugh she had already found reassuring.
He had gone out in another minute, and the girl felt curiously lonely as she remembered stories of men who had left their homesteads during a blizzard to see to the safety of the horses in a neighboring stable, and were found afterwards as still as the snow that covered them.

Maud Barrington was not unduly timorous, but the roar of that awful icy gale would have stricken dismay into the hearts of most men, and she found herself glancing with feverish impatience at a diminutive gold watch and wondering whether the cold had retarded its progress.