"I am sure your wisdom would not advise me to tell you that, Sir. You will find nothing there, Mr. Olmney."
They went gaily on, careering about in all directions, and bearing down upon every promising stump or dead pine-tree they saw in the distance. Hugh and Mr. Olmney took turns in the labour of hewing out the fat pine knots, and splitting down the old stumps to get at the pitchy heart of the wood; and the baskets began to grow heavy. The whole party were in excellent spirits, and as happy as the birds that filled the woods, and whose cheery "chick-a-dee-dee-dee" was heard whenever they paused to rest, and let the hatchet be still.
"How one sees everything in the colour of one"s own spectacles!" said Fleda.
"May I ask what colour yours are to-day?" said Mr. Olmney.
"Rose, I think," said Hugh.
"No," said Fleda, "they are better than that ? they are no worse colour than the snow"s own ? they show me everything just as it is. It could not be lovelier."
"Then we may conclude, may we not," said Mr. Olmney, "that you are not sorry to find yourself in Queechy again?"
"I am not sorry to find myself in the woods again. That is not pitch, Mr. Olmney."
"It has the same colour ? and weight."
"No, it is only wet ? see this, and smell of it ? do you see the difference? Isn"t it pleasant?"
"Everything is pleasant to-day," said he, smiling.
"I shall report you a cure. Come, I want to go a little higher and show you a view. Leave that, Hugh ? we have got enough."
But Hugh chose to finish an obstinate stump, and his companions went on without him. It was not very far up the mountain, and they came to a fine look-out point ? the same where Fleda and Mr. Carleton had paused long before on their quest after nuts. The wide spread of country was a white waste now; the delicate beauties of the snow were lost in the far view; and the distant Catskill showed wintrily against the fair blue sky. The air was gentle enough to invite them to stand still, after the exercise they had taken; and as they both looked in silence, Mr. Olmney observed that his companion"s face settled into a gravity rather at variance with the expression it had worn.
"I should hardly think," said he, softly, "that you were looking through white spectacles, if you had not told us so."
"Oh ? a shade may come over what one is looking at, you know,"
said Fleda. But seeing that he still watched her inquiringly, she added ?
"I do not think a very wide landscape is ever gay in its effect upon the mind ? do you?"
"Perhaps ? I do not know," said he, his eyes turning to it again, as if to try what the effect was.
"My thoughts had gone back," said Fleda, "to a time a good while ago, when I was a child, and stood here in summer weather ? and I was thinking that the change in the landscape is something like that which years make in the mind."
"But you have not, for a long time at least, known any very acute sorrow?"
"No," said Fleda, "but that is not necessary. There is a gentle kind of discipline which does its work, I think, more surely."
"Thank G.o.d for _gentle_ discipline!" said Mr. Olmney; "if you do not know what those griefs are that break down mind and body together."
"I am not unthankful, I hope, for anything," said Fleda, gently; "but I have been apt to think that, after a crushing sorrow, the mind may rise up again, but that a long-continued though much lesser pressure in time breaks the spring."
He looked at her again with a mixture of incredulous and tender interest, but her face did not belie her words, strange as they sounded from so young and in general so bright-seeming a creature.
"There shall no evil happen to the just," he said, presently, and with great sympathy.
Fleda flashed a look of grat.i.tude at him ? it was no more, for she felt her eyes watering, and turned them away.
"You have not, I trust, heard any bad news?"
"No, Sir ? not at all."
"I beg pardon for asking, but Mrs. Rossitur seemed to be in less good spirits than usual." He had some reason to say so, having found her in a violent fit of weeping.
"You do not need to be told," he went on, "of the need there is that a cloud should now and then come over this lower scene ? the danger that, if it did not, our eyes would look nowhere else?"
There is something very touching in hearing a kind voice say what one has often struggled to say to one"s-self.
"I know it, Sir," said Fleda, her words a little choked ? "and one may not wish the cloud away ? but it does not the less cast a shade upon the face. I guess Hugh has worked his way into the middle of that stump by this time, Mr. Olmney."
They rejoined him; and the baskets being now sufficiently heavy, and arms pretty well tired, they left the further riches of the pine woods unexplored, and walked sagely homewards. At the brow of the table-land, Mr. Olmney left them to take a shorter cut to the high road, having a visit to make which the shortening day warned him not to defer.
"Put down your basket, and rest a minute, Hugh," said Fleda.
"I had a world of things to talk to you about, and this blessed man has driven them all out of my head."
"But you are not sorry he came along with us?"
"O no. We had a very good time. How lovely it is, Hugh! Look at the snow down there ? without a track; and the woods have been dressed by the fairies. Oh, look how the sun is glinting on the west side of that hillock!"
"It is twice as bright since you have come home," said Hugh.
"The snow is too beautiful to-day. Oh, I was right! One may grow morbid over books, but I defy anybody, in the company of those chick-a-dees. I should think it would be hard to keep quite sound in the city."
"You are glad to be here again, aren"t you?" said Hugh.
"Very! O, Hugh! ? it is better to be poor, and have one"s feet on these hills, than to be rich, and shut up to brick walls!"
"It is best as it is," said Hugh, quietly.
"Once," Fleda went on ? "one fair day, when I was out driving in New York, it did come over me with a kind of pang, how pleasant it would be to have plenty of money again, and be at ease; and then, as I was looking off over that pretty north river to the other sh.o.r.e, I bethought me ? "A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked."
Hugh did not answer, for the face she turned to him, in its half-tearful, half-bright submission, took away his speech.
"Why, you cannot have enjoyed yourself as much as we thought, Fleda, if you dislike the city so much."
"Yes, I did. Oh, I enjoyed a great many things. I enjoyed being with the Evelyns. You don"t know how much they made of me ? every one of them ? father and mother, and all the three daughters ? and uncle Orrin. I have been well petted, I can tell you, since I have been gone."
"I am glad they showed so much discrimination," said Hugh; "they would be puzzled to make too much of you."
"I must have been in a remarkably discriminating society,"
said Fleda, "for everybody was very kind."
"How do you like the Evelyns, on a nearer view?"
"Very much, indeed; and I believe they really love me. Nothing could possibly be kinder, in all ways of showing kindness. I shall never forget it."