as
wretched weather; and how I came to be out in it I am sure I forget;
but perhaps it was that the morning had been a bright one, and that,
beguiled by the clear winter sun, which threw its will-o'-the-wisp
rays on my table like gold-edged invitation cards to be stirring, I
had set out joyously in hopes of a good bracing walk on the hard,
frost-dried roads, which, seen from my windows, gleamed smooth and
glistening as white marble, or, again, in expectation of a gay stroll
through the crisp, clean snow which draped the fields with its downy
folds and reflected the morning light in opal tints like the glossy
satin of a wedding-dress.

But in any case, and whatever may have been my reasons for so doing,
certain it is that about noon I had ventured out; and equally so that
some two hours after I had good reasons to regret my presumption, for
at three, having already wandered far from home, I found myself
tramping on the road I have named, wearily plodding my way through a
slough of thawing snow, teeth chattering, eyes watering and fingers
numbed, whilst a wind fit to dethrone all the weather-cocks in
Christendom was ploughing up the earth in showers of mud around me,
blowing my hat off my head and howling in my ears like a maniac who
has broken his chains and got loose.

I groaned pitifully amidst all this: in the first place, because I had
no umbrella; and in the second, because I had no companion to be
drenched through with me; for it is a curious fact, and one aptly
illustrative of the happy way in which man is constituted, that,
whereas I should most certainly have scrupled to ask a dog out on such
a day, yet I should have felt the most pleasurable relief in seeing a
fellow-being soaked like a towel in my company. The fact is, man is a
sociable animal, and, loving to share his emotions with his neighbors,
steps into a puddle with a lighter heart when a bosom friend is being
wetted to the skin by his side.

Lacking a partner, however, I trudged on alone, plish-plash-plosh,
through the clayey sludge, cold, dripping and miserable, stopping
occasionally to turn my back to the wind or to tie up a wayward
shoestring, and pondering dolefully in my mind that I had full two
hours to go, not only before reaching home, but perhaps before finding
a shelter of any kind. I think I must have been walking thus
three-quarters of an hour when I suddenly heard the music of two pairs
of hobnailed boots splashing in the dirt behind me