Four years younger, yet Cherry felt older than she. Alix's nature
was uncomplicated by any consciousness of self. Again like a
child, she only wanted people to love each other and be happy, and
that the sun should shine. She was equally content, whether she
was helping Peter to pile wood, tramping in the deluging summer
rains, or dreaming over a book through the long evenings, with her
shabby slippers to the fire. An exquisite spring morning, with wet
earth, rising mists, and shafts of pure, warm sunlight, made her
sing like the forest birds all about her, but even on the coldest
and blackest of winter nights, when the storm made the lamp-light
fluctuate alarmingly, and trees creaked over the cabin, she would
look up from the piano to say contentedly: "Well, I'd rather be
here than anywhere else, anyway!"

Naturally, she was unsympathetic. If people were in pain, or cold,
or hungry, Alix could sympathize. But for mental and spiritual
troubles she had small sympathy.

"Almost everybody in the world could live as simply as we do!" she
told Peter.

"It costs us about four thousand a year!" he said.

"Well, it NEEDN'T. We could buy fewer clothes, and keep only one
cow, and let the cook go! We'd be just as happy."

"To some people," Peter had objected, doubtfully, more than once,
"there are other things than clothes and food!"

"What things?"