their churches, and all that; then Cologne, you know, and a sail up the
Rhine to Mainz; then you'd go on to Bâle and Geneva, and we'd get you a
fine big carriage, with the horses decorated with foxes' and pheasants'
tails, to drive you to Chamounix. Then, when you had gone tremulously
over the Mer de Glace, and kept your wits about you going down the
Mauvais Pas, I don't think you could do better than go on to the Italian
lakes--you never saw anything like them, I'll be bound--and Naples and
Florence. Would you come back by the Tyrol, and have a turn at Zurich
and Lucerne, with a long ramble through the Black Forest in a trap
resembling a ramshackle landau?"

"Thank you," said Wenna very cheerfully. "The sketch is delightful, but
I am pretty comfortable where I am."

"But this can't last," said he.

"And neither can my holidays," she answered.

"Oh, but they ought to," he retorted vehemently. "You have not half
enough amusement in your life: that's my opinion. You slave too much for
all those folks about Eglosilyan and their dozens of children. Why, you
don't get anything out of life as you ought to. What have you to look
forward to? Only the same ceaseless round of working for other people.
Don't you think you might let some one else have a turn at that useful
but monotonous occupation?"

"But Wenna has something else to look forward to now," her mother
reminded him gently; and after that he did not speak for some while.

Fair and blue was the sea that shone all around the land when they got