Page:The Country-House Party.djvu/14

6 Come and hear the birds sing!' She turned a page on the other side. A picture of winter life: there were people on skis, on sledges, racing in the white beauty of the unpolluted snow. She looked at it long, and thought it the more attractive. 'After all, we do get a little sunshine, and can sometimes hear the birds. But how wonderful to stand in the midst of the snow—hills, trees, everything covered with the beautiful white—and the silence of the snow-covered earth. That was most wonderful of all. She could imagine it even from what she knew of the brief winter that had passed.' She had always longed for a sight of those great peaks, snow-covered—always longed, too, for that sunny clime, where the blue waters rippled at your feet, bidding you not hurry, but rest and listen.

Never had she been away from the dull English summers, and even these she had not seen at their best—had seldom been outside the gloomy haze of that great dark city. Yet in the face that returned her discontented gaze from the glass, there surely was a mould cast in some other land than this. The curling hair, the quick impassionate nature that looked from the dark eyes that met hers, the face that spoke of