but will live here, and next summer will astonish you with their
richness. Nor is it cold for _you_; it is dry as dust; you can walk over
it in moccasins, and not be damp: and it has covered away all the decay
of autumn, conserving for you in the air such pure oxygen that it will
be like new life in your veins, causing you to laugh at the frost."

"I have not your enthusiasm," she replied. Together they led the
unsteady feet of the little ones down the crisp snow path which Harold's
industrious shovel had made.

Trenholme spoke briefly of the work he was trying to do in his school.
A clergyman has social licence to be serious which is not accorded to
other men. Wherefore he spoke as a clergyman might speak to a friend,
saying, in general terms, how steep is the ascent when, among mundane
affairs, human beings try to tread only where the angels of the higher
life may lead.

Sophia assented, feeling a little sharp because it seemed to her that he
was taking up the thread of his acquaintance with her just where it had
formerly parted when she had thrown before him the gauntlet of such high
resolves and heavenly aims as young girls can easily talk about when
they know as yet nothing of their fulfilment. Whether or not Sophia knew
more of their fulfilment since then, she had, at least, learned a more
humble reverence for the very thought of such struggles, and she was
quite ready to believe that the man to whom she had once called to come
onward had by this time far outstripped her in the race. She was _ready_
for this belief; but she had not accepted it, because, as yet confused
and excited by all that was new, she had formed no conclusion whatever
with regard to Trenholme. It had puzzled her somewhat from the outset to
find him such a model of elegance in the matter of clothes and manners.