“O Mother! and all snow now!”
“There be chiller gear than snow, maid,” replied the mother bitterly.
“But it had been warmer in London, Mother?—if we had not lost our road.”
“May-be,” was the answer, in a tone which seemed to imply that it did not signify.
The child did not reply; and the woman continued to sit upright, and look forward, with an absent expression in her face, indicating that the mind was not where the eyes were.
“Only snow and frost!” she muttered—not speaking to the child. “Nought beyond, nor here ne there. Nay, snow is better than snowed-up hearts. Had it been warmer in London? May-be the hearts there had been as frosty as at Pleshy. Well! it will be warm in the grave, and we shall soon win yonder.”
“Be there fires yonder, Mother?” asked the child innocently.
The woman laughed—a bitter, harsh laugh, in which there was no mirth.
“The devil keepeth,” she said. “At least so say the priests. But what wit they? They never went thither to see. They will, belike, some day.”
The little girl was silent again, and the mother, after a moment’s pause, resumed her interrupted soliloquy.