"You don't like the sea best, do you?"
"No, Theresa, it's the mountains that have snared me."
"Tell me about them."
"It's so long since I've been."
"Why?"
He showed his jaded face. "I can't get there for nothing, my dear, and I don't want to leave your mother. But some day, when she is better, I'll take you there. I think you would be happy."
"Should I?" she questioned innocently, hiding her smile. "Let's pretend we're on the way. You tell me what we're coming to. I'll shut my eyes." She chuckled delightedly at her own babyishness, but he seemed unaware of it, for this was the little girl who had always wanted stories and never been denied.
"We'd get out of the train," he began, "and smell the sea; and then we should smell a fresh and wonderful wind, and we should know it came from the mountains, and we'd hurry along the road. We're hurrying, Theresa, to the place where that wind was born. It's the spring, I think. There are primroses in the hedges, lots of them by the stream, but I expect we shall see some snow on the hills. It lies late in the gullies, and at night it falls up there, when it is almost warm in the valleys. It's a long walk, but we're going very fast because we are so eager, and now we're turning a corner, and the wind comes more smartly, stealing our breath, and it is hard work to raise our heads against it to see——"
Theresa's parted lips drooped sharply, without warning, and stopped his speech. "Don't!" she cried imploringly. "Don't tell me! I—I don't think I like this game. Pretending!" She hid her face and indistinctly murmured: "I don't think I can bear to talk about it."
"My dear!"