‘Not at all. When it looked last night as if it hung right over our heads, it was shamming. See it now—far away there!’
‘But which, then, is the sham, and which is the true? It looked near yesterday, and now it looks far away. Which is which?’
‘It must have been a sham yesterday; for although it looked near, it was very dull and dim, and you could only see the sharp outline of it.’
‘Just so I argue on the other side. The mountain must be shamming now, for although it looks so far off, it yet shows a most contradictory clearness—not only of outline but of surface.’
‘Aha!’ thought I, ‘Miss Clara has found her match. They both know he is talking nonsense, yet she can’t answer him. What she was saying was nonsense too, but I can’t answer it either—not yet.’
I felt proud of both of them, but of Charley especially, for I had had no idea he could be so quick.
‘What ever put such an answer into your head, Charley?’ I exclaimed.
‘Oh! it’s not quite original,’ he returned. ‘I believe it was suggested by two or three lines I read in a review just before we left home. They took hold of me rather.’
He repeated half of the now well-known little poem of Shelley, headed Passage of the Apennines. He had forgotten the name of the writer, and it was many years before I fell in with the lines myself.
‘The Apennine in the light of day
Is a mighty mountain dim and gray,
Which between the earth and sky doth lay;
But when night comes, a chaos dread
On the dim starlight then is spread,
And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm.’