as human children masquerade in their mothers’ bonnets and shawls. . . . I wonder if little Paulie, that I am going to tell you about presently, ever did that? Ah, and one might change the simile, and remember that, as those clouds take the place of real snows, so in some human lives there is no more substantial variety than dreams and distant memories afford. You will take my meaning better presently.
To come back now to these hills. Apart from any actual frolicking, their whole atmosphere seems one of strength and gladness: frank, careless, simple, just an effect of sheer health and vitality, like a child’s delight at nothing at all but the sun’s shining. “There is sorrow on the sea; it cannot be quiet,” as Jeremiah noticed long ago; and snow-peaks aspire, and seem spiritual. But these great, grassy hills, in their lack of shade and mystery, their freedom, their independent joy and vigour, seem to me somehow always frankly pagan.
On again, and up—between green walls now. There is very little detail, and we have lost all view. Every sound, every little change in the sky or on the ground has now an extraordinary value. The cry of yonder quail fills the round world; that hare, pausing for a moment with long, dewdabbled ears at full cock, was an event; yonder purple foxglove almost a shock, among all this green. Yes, the hills have their monotony also—but here we are!
Where? At the place the mountain-track leads to. It stops here deep between the walling hills, you notice, with no view out at all, but that one peep of far-off sea—just enough to let you feel
