"Ah, but you see, Pauline is always impressing on Monica and me our cruelty to you, and by this time Mother has been talked into believing in our hard and impenitent hearts."
"Pauline is...." Guy broke off and saw another squirrel. He could not trust himself to speak of Pauline, for in this stillness of snow he felt that the lightest remark would reveal his love; and there was in nature this morning a sort of suspense that seemed to rebuke unuttered secrets.
"Well, as you're walking with me to Fairfield—or nearly to Fairfield—your neglect of us shall be forgiven," Margaret promised. "Here we are out of the warm trees already. I'm glad I came this way, though I think it was rather foolish. Look how deep the snow seems on that field we've got to cross."
"It isn't really," said Guy, vaulting over the fence that ran round the confines of the Abbey wood.
"Ah, now you've spoiled it," she exclaimed. But Margaret did not pause a moment to regret the ruffling of that sheeted expanse, and they walked on silently, watching the toes of their boots juggle with the snow.
"It generally is a pity," said Guy, after a while.
"What?"
"Impressing one's existence on so lovely and inviolate a thing as this." He indicated the untrodden field in front of them.
"But look behind you," said Margaret. "Don't you think our footprints look very interesting?"
"Interesting, perhaps," Guy admitted. "Yet footprints in snow never seem to be going anywhere."