Then the
completed hut had to be furnished. A carpenter in Ottawa made me a
little dresser, a little table, and little chairs of plain deal; I
bought some cooking utensils, some enamelled-iron tea-things and
plates, and found in Ottawa some crude oleographs printed on oil-
cloth and impervious to damp. These were duly hung on the snow
walls of the hut, and the little girls worked some red Turkey-
twill curtains for the ice windows, and a frill for the
mantelpiece in orthodox south of England cottage style. The boys
made a winding tunnel through the snow-drifts up to the door of
the hut, and Nature did the rest, burying the hut in snow until
its very existence was unsuspected by strangers, though it may be
unusual to see clouds of wood-smoke issuing from an apparent snow-
drift. That little house stood for over three months; it afforded
the utmost joy to its youthful occupiers, and I confess that I
took a great paternal pride in it myself. Really at night, with
the red curtains drawn over the ice windows, with the pictures on
its snow walls, a lamp alight and a roaring log fire blazing on
the brick hearth, it was the most invitingly cosy little place.
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