Prompt: Ice on the Pond, from Stutley Constable
a 221b
"Watson, there is ice in the pond! Come, there is not a moment to lose!"
Holmes frequently made pronouncements which I was unable to follow. I could find no reason that the appearance of ice in the mill pond, during winter, was an emergency. "What is so urgent, Holmes?" I asked from the sofa, where I was engaged in a novel.
Holmes, his head in a cupboard, did not answer save to throw a tarp on the floor behind him, where it narrowly missed his violin. I hastily got up and moved the instrument away as several other tarps followed the first. "You have not been here during winter yet," my friend said, his voice muffled. "The operation must be perfectly timed and executed, or else it shall be a failure."
"What shall be a failure, Holmes?" I asked. "What the devil are these tarps for?"
Holmes emerged carrying several other tarps, and stared at me as if it should be obvious, and undoubtedly it was, to him. "Why, Watson," he said. "That means it is winter!"
This seemed obvious enough to me, though it failed to explain the importance,or the urgency, of the tarps.
"My dear Watson," Holmes said, with the air of explaining something to a child. "Surely you know that in winter, one must cover the beehives!"