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CHAPTER XIII

The controversy happily ended there. At table the conversation turned on lighter subjects: England and its icy winter, its skating and its snowballing.

"Don't you pity us?" said my sister, addressing the doctor. "We have never been out of this land, never seen snow or ice excepting once at Naini Tal."

"But the ice we saw there," I replied, "was not the same as you describe. It was a sort of a mound of ice, a mass of frozen snow collected in a gorge, where it remained unthawed even in summer. It was very beautiful, however. At one place at the base the ice had melted in such a way as to form a bridge, and the front having melted entirely, the whole had the appearance of a house, the melted part forming the entrance."

"It was a beautiful quiet place," remarked my sister. "We reached it by using the sound of the cascade as our guide."

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