“Can’t you see that for yourself?” grunted Uncle Andy impatiently.  “It was breath.  Try to think for yourself a little.  Well, as I was trying to say, there was nothing much for the cub to do in the snowhouse but nurse, sleep, and grow.  To these three important but not exciting affairs he devoted himself entirely.  Neither to him nor to his big white mother did it matter in the least whether the long Arctic gales roared over their unseen roof, or the unimaginable Arctic cold groped for them with noiseless fingers.  Neither foe could reach them in their warm refuge.  Nothing at all, indeed, could find them, except, once in a while, when the Northern Lights were dancing with unusual brilliance across the sky, a dim, pallid glow, which would filter down through the snow and allow the cub’s eyes (if they happened to be open at the time) to make out something of his mother’s gigantic white form.

“For the youngster of so huge a mother, the snowhouse baby was quite absurdly small.  But this defect, by sticking closely to his business, he remedied with amazing rapidity.  In fact, if his mother had cared to stay awake long enough to watch, she could fairly have seen him grow.  But, of course, this growth was all at his mother’s expense, seeing that he had no food except her milk.  So as he grew bigger and fatter, she grew thinner and lanker, till you would hardly have recognized this long, gaunt, white fur bag of bones for the plump beast of the previous autumn.

“But all passes—­even an Arctic winter.  The sun began to make short daily trips across the horizon.  It got higher and higher, and hotter and hotter.  The snow began to melt, crumble, shrink upon itself.  Up to within a couple of hundred yards of the hidden snowhouse, what had seemed to be solid land broke up and revealed itself as open sea, crowded with huge ice cakes, and walrus, and seals.  Sea birds came splashing and screaming.  And a wonderful thrill awoke in the air.

“That thrill got down into the snowhouse—­the roof of which was by this time getting much thinner.  The cub found himself much less sleepy.  He grew restless.  He wanted to stretch his sturdy little legs to find out what they were good for.  His mother, too, woke up.  She found herself so hungry that there was no temptation to go to sleep again.  Moreover, it was beginning to feel too warm for comfort—­that is, for a polar bear’s comfort, not for yours or mine—­in the snowhouse.  She got up and shook herself.  One wall of the snowhouse very civilly gave way a bit, allowing her more room.  But the roof, well supported by the rock, still held.  The snowhouse was full of a beautiful pale-blue light.