We could find no shoes for the children and they went barelegged and
barefooted all the winter. They did not seem to mind it, except on the
most bitterly cold days, when the wind howled about the hut, roaring
through the pines and naked-boughed oaks, blowing before it the snow in
silver dust. Then they kept inside the hut all day. But, on sunny and
windless days, they ran about barefoot in the snow and seemed entirely
indifferent to the cold, though they always appeared glad to dry and warm
their little pink toes at the fire, after they returned to the hut.
Agathemer, more knowing than I, would not let them approach the fire until
they had bathed their feet in a crock of water he kept standing ready
inside the hut door and had partially dried them afterwards. He said that
otherwise their feet would puff and swell and perhaps inflame. They seemed
happy-hearted little beings and Secunda was bright. But Prima was very
dull and less intelligent than her younger sister. We concluded that she
was, while not anything like an idiot, certainly a very backward child,
lacking the wit of a normal child of her age.
After the first snow fell we had no more trouble with violent outbreaks
from the sick woman; or, at least, very little.
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