“Though it may be healthy, it would be better without it at all,” said the mayor, wiping his wedge-shaped beard with a red handkerchief. “It would be a good riddance! To my thinking, your Excellency, the Lord sends it us as a punishment⁠—the frost, I mean. We sin in the summer and are punished in the winter.⁠ ⁠… Yes!”

Yegor Ivanitch looked round him quickly and flung up his hands.

“Why, where’s the needful⁠ ⁠… to warm us up?” he asked, looking in alarm first at the governor and then at the bishop. “Your Excellency! Your Holiness! I’ll be bound, the ladies are frozen too! We must have something, this won’t do!”

Everyone began gesticulating and declaring that they had not come to the skating to warm themselves, but the mayor, heeding no one, opened the door and beckoned to someone with his crooked finger. A workman and a fireman ran up to him.

“Here, run off to Savatin,” he muttered, “and tell him to make haste and send here⁠ ⁠… what do you call it?⁠ ⁠… What’s it to be? Tell him to send a dozen glasses⁠ ⁠… a dozen glasses of mulled wine, the very hottest, or punch, perhaps.⁠ ⁠…”

There was laughter in the pavilion.

“A nice thing to treat us to!”

“Never mind, we will drink it,” muttered the mayor; “a dozen glasses, then⁠ ⁠… and some Benedictine, perhaps⁠ ⁠… and tell them to warm two bottles of red wine.⁠ ⁠… Oh, and what for the ladies? Well, you tell them to bring cakes, nuts⁠ ⁠… sweets of some sort, perhaps.⁠ ⁠… There, run along, look sharp!”

The mayor was silent for a minute and then began again abusing the frost, banging his arms across his chest and thumping with his golosh boots.