They had been climbing a steep ascent, very difficult in the snow, and had at length reached the top, where they stood for a moment panting, with another ascent beyond them.
“Aren’t you always wanting to climb and climb, Lady Joan?” said the boy.
“Call me Joan, and I will answer you.”
“Then, Joan,—how kind you are! Don’t you always want to be getting up?—up higher than you are?”
“No; I don’t think I do.”
“I believe you do, only you don’t know it. When I get on the top of yon hill there, it always seems to me such a little way up!—and Mr. Simon tells me I should feel much the same, if it were the top of the highest peak in the Himmalays.”
Lady Joan did not reply, and Cosmo too was silent for a time.
“Don’t you think,” he began again, “though life is so very good—to me especially with you here—you would get very tired if you thought you had to live in this world always—for ever and ever and ever, and never, never get out of it?”
“No, I don’t,” said Joan. “I can’t say I find life so nice as you think it, but one keeps hoping it may turn to something better.”
She was amused with what she counted childish talk for a boy of his years—so manly too beyond his years!