It was an ideal winter's day. The sky was clear, with the cold, pale blue of January, so different from the deep, warm azure of July. The sun, low down on the horizon, though it was still near its meridian, sent long, slanting rays over the white waste, catching the tops of the hills and making them shine and sparkle like diamonds. Each bush and tree was coated with rime, and edged with a tracery of delicate lacework. The snow, crisp and hard, crunched under the girls' feet as they walked, and here and there they could mark the track of a rabbit or a bird that had hurried through the cold, to shelter under the protection of some gorse-bush.
"It's just like fairyland! It might be part of the Frost King's Palace!" said Aldred. "I'm sure the Snow Queen has been here. I feel as if we ought to find Gerda hunting for little Kay—I expect she's just behind that bush, riding the Robber Maiden's reindeer, with her hands in the big muff. The Lapland woman and the Finland woman can't be far off."
"What do you mean?" asked Lorna Hallam.
"You benighted girl! have you never read Hans Andersen?"
"I believe I did, ages ago, but I've forgotten it all."
"So much the worse for you, then!"
"Why, one can't bother to remember silly fairy tales!"
"Hans Andersen is not silly; he's a classic."
"Quite right!" said Miss Drummond, who happened to overhear. "I consider the dear old Dane was one of the truest poets that ever lived. His writing has a purity of style that sets it on a very high pinnacle in literature, and his thoughts are most exquisite. No one who has really appreciated his lovely, tender stories can ever be quite vulgar and commonplace. He seems to take all the simple, everyday things, and wave his magic wand over them and turn them into enchantment."
"But the tales aren't true, Miss Drummond!" objected Lorna. "One can't see fairies."