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Mrs Dixon did not seem in the least surprised when Dick and Dorothea, who had set out alone, came back to the farm in a party of eight.

“You’ve not lost much time about it,” she said. “I was thinking you’d be running into each other somewhere. Well, Miss Ruth and Miss Peggy, and how’s your mother keeping, and what’s the news from your Uncle Jim? It seems no time since I was cooking toffees in the summer for you others when you came up to fetch the milk in the mornings. Time does flit on, to be sure.”

“Can we be out to dinner?” asked Dorothea.

“Glad to see the backs of you,” said Mrs Dixon. “I’ve washing to do to-day. You’ve come just at the right time, Miss Ruth, or Nancy is it? I’m forgetting. I’ve been meaning to send one of my pork pies to Mrs Blackett, and you can take it for me, and then you two can take another to make do for your dinner. And there’s a bag of toffees for the lot of you. Eh! come in, Dixon, none but old friends here.”

Mr Dixon was standing in the doorway.

“How do you do, Mr Dixon?” said Titty.

“How do you do?” said all the others.

“Champion, thank ye,” said Mr Dixon, and went off again out of the kitchen.

“And now then,” said Mrs Dixon, as she came back from the larder with two of the new pork pies, “what have you two lasses been doing with your shoes?”

Nancy and Peggy were holding first one foot and then the other towards the kitchen fire, and the steam was pouring up.

“The tarn,” said Peggy.

“I was sure it would be bearing all right,” said Nancy, “and it very nearly is, but I never thought about not going on both together. We were a bit galootish. At least I was.”

“Fair couple of gummocks, I’d call you,” said Mrs Dixon. “You’d best be having them shoes off and let me be drying the stockings.”

But the red-caps were in a hurry to get on.

“Yon’s the way to catch a death of cold,” said Mrs Dixon.

“We’ll be drying them in a few minutes,” said Nancy. “Come on, you others. Have you got knapsacks, you two?”

“They’re in our school trunks,” said Dorothea. “I’ll go and get them.”

“Never mind for now,” said Nancy. “I can put mother’s pork pie into my knapsack, and Peggy can put your one into hers.”

“What are you going to drink?” asked Mrs Dixon.

“Tea,” said Susan. “We’ve got milk to spare for them.”

“They’ll want a couple of mugs,” said Mrs Dixon.

“One between them,” said Nancy firmly. “Let them travel light.”

“And if one’s broken they’ll have none,” said Mrs Dixon, and she gave them two mugs, one of which was packed in Peggy’s knapsack and one in Nancy’s.

And with that the whole lot of them poured out of the hot farm kitchen into the cold air, out of the yard, across the road, through the gate, and away up the cart track to the barn.

Dorothea felt a little as if she had tumbled into a river and was being swept away in a strong current. Yesterday she and Dick had been alone as usual, just looking at things and planning stories, and now here they were in a crowd of eight, hurrying up the hill-side in the winter sunshine, with a pork pie for dinner in the knapsack of a girl they had only known about half an hour, going they did not know where, to do they did not know what. Eight of them! In all her stories there were usually not more than two, or at most four, and then perhaps a villain. She looked from face to face. But no, not one of these six strangers looked in the least like a villain. She found Titty walking beside her, and smiling at her in a very friendly way.

Dick was walking close in front of them, being questioned by Roger.

“Do you really know all about the stars?”

“I only know a few of them,” said Dick.

“I know the saucepan and the Pole star,” said Roger.

“The saucepan?”

“The one you find the Pole by.”

“It’s much more like a saucepan than some of the things they call it,” said Dick. “I’ve got a book that has them all in, all the constellations, at least. We’re going to watch them every night. Till we have to go.”

“Where’s your school?”

Close behind her came the four whom Dorothea put down in her mind as the elders, though she did not think that Peggy could be very much older than she was herself. She could not help hearing what they were talking about.

“Shiver my timbers, but why not?”

“An astronomer might be quite useful.”

“But what’s she going to do?”

“We’ll soon know if they’re any good.”

This was dreadful, and Dorothea hurried out of earshot along the frozen track, sweeping Titty with her, in pursuit of Dick and Roger, who had just broken into a run, to have another look at the observatory, even if the others should not mean to stop there.

“It’s a pretty good place,” said Nancy, when the elders came up to the barn, and Susan was calling to Roger to hurry up and come down from the upper storey, where he was looking at Holly Howe through Dick’s telescope. “It’s a pretty good place, but just wait till you’ve seen ours.”

They hurried on round the shore of the frozen tarn. “We don’t want anybody else going through the ice,” Susan said, “and John said that there would be skating to-morrow, and that there was no point in spoiling the ice to-day.”

Beyond the tarn Titty and Roger ran on ahead, taking Dorothea and Dick with them. Presently they turned up the side of the hill through the remains of an old wood. There were a lot of fallen larches, that had not been able to stand against the wind. There were short, bushy hazels and willows that had been cut many times, for kindling or for charcoal-burning. There were little stunted oaks, rowans, and birch trees, bare, excepting that a few of the oaks still carried some of the dried leaves of last year, which made a noise almost like water when the wind stirred them. There was no cart track here, but they were walking along what Dorothea thought must be an ancient pathway through the wood. And this pathway suddenly ended in a sort of platform on the hillside, among the little trees, and, at the back of this platform, nestling against the hill, was a low hut with no windows, looking almost like a heap of stones.

“That’s the igloo,” said Titty.

Dorothea had never seen anything like it before, but Dick, who remembered looking at ancient remains with his father, said at once, “It’s very old. You can tell by the big stones and the round corners.”

“Part of it’s old,” said Roger.

“We’ve been working at it for ages,” said Titty. “Every day until yesterday.”

The walls of the building were low and rough. There were very big stones near the ground, and it was easy to see where the new builders had begun by the smaller stones they had used. All the stones had been fitted one on another without mortar. Then, across from one side of the building to the other, larch poles had been laid on the top of the walls. They stuck out on either side, thick ends and thin ends alternately. On the top of the larch poles there seemed to be a sheet of metal. The corners of it showed, but some big stones had been put on the top of it to hold it down, and earth had been heaped over all. But the strangest thing of all was that at the back of the hut a rusty iron chimney-pipe sprouted up out of the rude stone wall.

“The chimney was the hardest to do,” said Titty, who was watching Dorothea to see what she thought of it all. “What was left of the old chimney was far too big and when we tried to build on it the stones kept falling down inside. And then John thought of crossing long flat stones at the corners so that the hole in the middle got smaller and smaller and we could jam that pipe in. It’s been drawing better and better since we got the worst leaks stuffed up with earth.”

“Why do you call it an igloo?” asked Dick.

“An igloo is an Eskimo hut,” said Titty.

“Oughtn’t it to be all snow?” said Dick.

“Well, you should have seen this one last week,” said Titty, “before the snow melted. When there was that big fall of snow it got covered altogether, and looked just right.”

“Only then we hadn’t such a good roof,” said Roger, “so we all got wet inside it.”

“We had only the larch poles then,” said Peggy, who had just come up with the other three. “Only poles and a bit of tarpaulin, and when we lit the fire and got all snug, the snow melted on the top of us and came pouring through.”

“Then when the snow was gone,” Titty went on, “John found a bit of old iron roofing in the shed at Holly Howe, and we harnessed a team of dogs to it.”

“Titty and I weren’t the only dogs,” said Roger. “Even John and Susan and Captain Nancy harnessed themselves and pulled like anything.”

THE IGLOO

“The chimney was the worst,” said Susan. “Masses of snow fell through and put the fire out.”

“Some of the snow fell bang into Susan’s saucepan,” said Roger.

“It won’t do it again,” said Nancy, “not now we’ve got a proper stovepipe. Jib-booms and bobstays! Everybody’s got to learn. Come on. Let’s get ahead with the caulking. The snow may come again to-morrow, and you can still see daylight through in lots of places.”

“We must get your things dry first,” said Susan.

“All right, Mister Mate,” said Nancy. “Now then. Visitors first.” She pulled aside a piece of sacking that hung down and covered the doorway. “Yes. All fours. I know it’s a bit low. But it ought to be. Real igloos have tunnels.”

Just for one moment Dorothea hesitated, crouching down and looking out of the daylight into that pitch black hole. “ ‘In you go,’ said the gaoler, and, as the unsuspecting maiden crept into the darkness, the gate clanged behind her, and she heard the rusty key grate in the lock. She was a prisoner. Iron Bars. A Tale of the Past.” But, after all, a bit of sacking was not much of a prison door. And nothing could really happen. Everybody was friendly.

“Shall I wriggle in first?” Dick was waiting, eager to see the igloo from the inside.

“No,” said Dorothea.

It was a moment or two before either of them could see very much by the light that filtered into the igloo through holes between the stones and down the chimney. And behind them the others were crowding in.

“Half a minute, and we’ll have a lantern lit,” said John.

“Keep to the left,” said Nancy, “and you won’t have to stoop. It’s a bit low on the other side.”

“Hurry up, Peggy. Let’s have some of the small twigs. In that pile. Just by your hand.”

Dorothea and Dick felt themselves being pushed out of the way first by one and then by another in the bustle of getting the fire lit and the lantern hung up in its place under the roof.

“What a splendid fireplace!” said Dick, as Susan blew a handful of twigs into a blaze.

The fireplace was, indeed, the chief beauty of the igloo. The old ruin on the foundations of which it had been built had had a big open fireplace, built of rough stones. The arch over the fireplace and part of a chimney had been left standing, and John and Nancy and the others had begun their building above it. But they had managed to wedge an iron bar in among the stones and across from one side to the other, and a black kettle was hanging from it by a double hook of wire. No igloo in Greenland ever had a fireplace as good.

“I got a pocket-knife with a file in it at Christmas,” said Captain Nancy, sitting down close by the fireplace on one of several short, stumpy logs, which were clearly meant for stools. “Jolly lucky. But we pretty nearly wore it out filing through an old railing to get that cross-bar. It took us ages, turn and turn about, working in shifts, you know. Go on, sit down anywhere. It’ll be as warm as anything in two secs.”

The lantern was burning now, and on each side of the little hut they could see rough benches, made of planks nailed to short billets for legs. Dick noticed the saw that had been used to cut them hanging from a wooden peg driven in between the stones of the wall. A saucepan was hanging on the wall beside it. In one corner there was a pile of cut wood reaching from the floor almost to the roof.

“That’s in case we get snowed up,” said Titty.

“I only w-w-wish we were,” said Nancy.

“Snowed up or not, now is the time to use it,” said Susan. “Come on. Your teeth are chattering again. Another few sticks and it’ll do. No, Roger! No toffee till after dinner.”

Peggy was passing sticks from the pile to Susan, who was building a cage of them over the twigs that were now blazing in the fireplace.

“Skip along, somebody, and fill the kettle,” said Susan, and Roger grabbed it and went crawling out, with Titty after him.

“Let’s go with them,” said Dick to Dorothea.

“Can we?” said Dorothea.

“Why not?” said Nancy.

“Is there anything else that’ll hold water?” said Dick.

“Good man,” said John.

“Let him take the saucepan,” said Susan.

The four of them crawled out of the igloo, stood up outside and, led by Roger, went off among the thin, straggly underwood and over the frozen leaves of last year’s foxgloves to a little trickling beck that was finding its way down from the high fells to the lake. It was small enough to step across, and its tiny pools had edgings of ice, as if the stream had shrunk and left the ice outside itself. Branches that hung across splashed by its little waterfalls had turned to thick glass bars, inside which could be seen, like cores, the twigs on which the splashes had frozen. Dick dipped the saucepan.

“Wait a minute,” said Roger, who was busy breaking off bits of ice. He put them one by one into the saucepan till they floated level with the brim like small icebergs. “Better than nothing,” he said. “Captain Nancy’ll be jolly pleased.”

Titty filled the kettle from under one of the little waterfalls.

“Let me carry it,” said Dorothea, who badly wanted to be of some use.

“Better not,” said Titty. “You left your gloves in the igloo. Your hands would freeze to the handle.”

On their way back, they met John, who was gathering moss to pack the holes between the stones of the igloo.

“Why not earth?” asked Dick.

“Frozen too hard,” said John. “We have to melt even the moss before it’s really any good.”

He picked up the box in which he had been putting it, and came back with them.

“Any amount of leaks to caulk,” he said, and they saw that the smoke which was pouring in a most homely manner from the stovepipe chimney was also finding its way out through all sorts of small holes in the stonework.

“It is a lovely place, said Dorothea, looking at the rough little hut with the smoke climbing from it.

“Not half bad,” said John, “if only there was some snow.”

They crawled in. There was a grand fire now blazing in the fireplace, and in spite of all the leakages in the walls and the cold outside, the igloo was very warm. Nancy and Peggy were sitting on two of the log stools, wriggling bare toes before the flames. Their stockings were hung just above the fireplace on a string stretched between two pegs. Their shoes were being dried, turned every minute like pieces of toast. The lantern hanging from the roof and the leaping flames on the hearth filled the little hut with cheerful light. John emptied his box of moss on a pile that was already thawing. Peggy spread it so that as much of it as possible should be warming at once. Susan had been waiting for the kettle, and hung it from the cross-bar in the chimney so that it dangled in the hottest of the fire.

“We’ve got some real ice in the saucepan,” said Roger, and Dick, half blinded by the mist that settled on his cold spectacles in the warm hut, held out the saucepan to Nancy.

“In the kettle, too?” she asked eagerly.

“No.”

“It’ll boil a lot quicker without,” said Susan.

“All right,” said Nancy, “it can’t be helped.”

“But why did you want it in the kettle?” asked Dick.

Titty answered him. “Well, if we had to melt ice to make our tea,” she said, “anybody could see it would be much more like the real thing.”

To Dick and Dorothea, as they sat on a bench sharing their pork pie with the explorers, and being given slabs of Holly Howe cake in return, things seemed very well, even as they were. The Arctic might be in a poor way for ice, but inside the igloo, with the lantern and the fire, what did it matter whether the world outside was as they had left it or fathoms deep in snow? Eagerly, when dinner was over, they helped in the washing up (the icebergs by that time had melted in the saucepan). Eagerly, during the short winter afternoon, they helped in the gathering of firewood. Eagerly, when they were allowed, they crammed warm moss between the stones of the walls until someone inside the igloo sang out that in that place at least he or she could see daylight no more. Eagerly they worked the moss into chinks in the stones round the chimney where wisps of smoke found their way through. Nothing was said about asking them actually to join the Polar expedition. But last thing, when it was time to go home, and Dorothea picked up the mugs they had been lent by Mrs Dixon, Nancy stopped her.

“They may as well leave these with ours, mayn’t they, Susan? We’ll all be up here to-morrow.”

That was enough for Dorothea. As she and Dick walked down the cart track to the farm, they were not talking. Dick was already thinking of the evening’s stars and his observatory. Dorothea, for once, was inventing no stories. She was living in one. Those two mugs, left in the igloo, were as good as a promise that there was more of the story to come.

The council among the explorers began the moment Dick and Dorothea were out of sight.

“Of course, they aren’t sailors,” said John, “but that idea about Mars was really pretty good.”

“They’ll have to sweat up signals,” said Nancy. “Think of having an idea like that and then not being able to say two words when the other side answered.”

“She wears pigtails,” said Peggy.

“There’s nothing absolutely wrong with pigtails,” said Nancy.

“Sailors used to wear them once,” said Titty.

“But not one at each side,” said Roger.

Nothing was definitely settled, but that night, when it had been dark a couple of hours, and Susan was talking of bedtime for Roger, Titty said, “We may as well give them a flash or two.”

The astronomer and his assistant must have had at least half an eye on Mars, for the flashing of a lamp in that upper window was instantly answered by other flashes high on the hill-side.

“They’re watching,” said Titty.

“It would be rather beastly to leave them out of things,” said Susan.