"These wintry tree-forms are fine, though," he found himself obliged to
conclude his apology, rather irrelevantly, as the wheels of the rattling,
and tilting carry all crunched the surface of the road in the succession
of jerks responding to the alternate walk and gallop of the horse.

"Yes, they are," Miss Shirley answered, looking around with a certain
surprise, as if seeing them now for the first time. "So much variety of
color; and that burnished look that some of them have." The trees, far
and near, were giving their tones and lustres in the low December sun.

"Yes," he said, "it's decidedly more refined than the autumnal coloring
we brag of."

"It is," she approved, as with novel conviction. "The landscape is
really beautiful. So nice and flat," she added.

He took her intention, and he said, as he craned his neck out of the
carryall to include the nearer roadside stretches, with their low bushes
lifting into remoter trees, "It's restful in a way that neither the
mountains nor the sea, quite manage."

"Oh yes," she sighed, with a kind of weariness which explained itself in
what she added: "It's the kind of thing you'd like to have keep on and
on." She seemed to say that more to herself than to him, and his eyes
questioned her. She smiled slightly in explaining: "I suppose I find it
all the more beautiful because this is my first real look into the world
after six months indoors."

"Oh!" he said, and there was no doubt a prompting in his tone.