The deserted street could only see occasionally a torpidly-peddling countryman with a worn-out felt cap on his head and a basket of potatoes or turnips on his arm.
" Well, quite, " said Dumbledore, with a faint smile. " And now it is time to hear from Hokey the house-elf, who worked for a very old, very rich witch by the name of Hepzibah Smith."
In Mrs. Yeobright's garden large-leaved plants of a tender kind flagged by ten o'clock in the morning; rhubarb bent downward at eleven; and even stiff cabbages were limp by noon.
Cars had gone off the road at crazy angles, and on several of the grades traffic was barely struggling along, summer tires spinning helplessly in the drifting powder.