There was a silence of some moments. The train rushed on, past fields
desolate under patches of snow, and stark, leafless trees; over rivers
dotted with cakes of grimy ice; between banks of frost-gnawed rock. The
landscape in the dim January afternoon was gray and gloomy; and as day
declined everything became more lorn and forbidding. Maurice turned
away from the window, and sighed.
"How disconsolate the country looks!" said he. "I am country bred, and
I don't know that I ever thought of the sadness of it; but now if I see
the country in winter it makes me sigh for the people who have to live
there all the year round."
"But they don't notice it any more than you did when you lived in it."
"Perhaps not; but it seems to me as if they must. At any rate they must
feel the effects of it, whether they are conscious of it or not."
Miss Morison looked out at the dull, sodden fields and stark trees.
"I am afraid that you were never a true lover of the country," said she
thoughtfully. "You should know my grandmother. She is almost ninety,
but she is as young as a girl in her teens. She has lived in the finest
cities in the world,--London, Paris, St.
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