"What did you see this morning?" asked Hester, wondering.
"I saw the sun rise," he answered.
"Did you really? I'm so glad! That is a sight rarely seen in London—at least if I may judge by my own experience."
"One goes to bed so late and so tired!" he replied simply.
"True! and even if one be up in time, where could you see it from?"
"I have seen it rise coming home from a dance; but then somehow you don't seem to have anything to do with it. I have, however, often smelt the hay in the streets in the morning."
Hester was checked by this mention of the hay—as if the sun was something that belonged to the country, like the grass he withered; but ere she had time to explain to herself what she felt, the next thing he said got her over it.
"I assure you I felt as if I had never seen the sun before. His way of getting up was a new thing to me altogether. He seemed to mean shining—and somehow I felt that he did. In London he always looks indifferent—just as if he had got it to do, and couldn't help it, like everybody else in the horrible place. Who is it that says—'God made the country, and man made the town'?"
"I think it was Cowper, but I'm not sure," answered Hester. "It can't be quite true though. I suspect man has more to do with the unmaking than the making of either. We have reason to be glad he has not come near enough to us yet to destroy either our river or our atmosphere."
"He is creeping on, though. The quarries are not very far from you even now."