The girl stopped.

"What now?" said the woman, testily.

"Look--yonder!"

"Look yonder--what for? That's nothing but a mountain, a great waste of
land all piled up to the sky, and covered with a lot of ice and snow. I
don't see what they were made for, any way--just to make people go round,
I suppose, so that the world will not be too easy for them."

"Oh, mother, I do not see how you can feel so out here! I never dreamed of
anything so beautiful!"

"Feel so out here! What do you mean? Haven't I always been good to you?
Didn't I give you a good home in Lynn after your father and mother died?
Wasn't I a mother to you? Didn't I nurse you through the fever? Didn't I
send for you to come way out here with the immigrants, and did you ever
find a better friend in the world than I have been to you?"

"Yes, mother, but--"

"And don't I let you play the violin, which the Methody elder didn't much
approve of?"

"Yes, mother, you have always been good to me, and I love you more than
anybody else on earth."

There swept into view a wild valley of giant trees, and rose clear above