Page:The Tsar's Window.djvu/63

 over frozen streams, and were glad to envelope our heads in our coat-collars as we reached the Point and gazed out over the Gulf of Finland. Snow as far as the eye could reach, melting into a steely gray sky. No sunshine, but a faint, cold, pink light in the south.

Tom began,—

"This is the most enlivening spot—"

We all shivered, and cried in concert, "Don't!"

"Very well, I wont; but if you ever catch me so far away from home again—"

"You will add to your cold if you talk so much," cried Grace.

These were almost the first words Tom had uttered since we came out, as he meekly suggested, but his anxious wife muffled him up, and we turned our faces homeward. We drove through thick woods, the bare branches outlined sharply against the clear sky, looking now and then down long, snowy roads bordered with evergreens and ending in more woods. I could almost hear the wolves howl. Everything was as still as death. The country houses, with windows and doors boarded up and fountains frozen, looked silent and mysterious. When we reached home, Tom remarked that he did not see how Alice could live in such a country.

He did not regain his customary spirits until this morning, when Mr. Thurber induced us to go skating. At first I refused, but they urged me so strongly that I was obliged to yield.

Mr. Thurber, as a skating man, came out in an entirely new light. He was no longer a middle-aged