Virgo Asleep.
Glynne Day stood with her uncle at the edge of the dark wood, where the slippery fir-needles lay thickly, and kept every blade of verdure from thrusting forth a relief to the dull, neutral grey that carpeted the ground, amid the tall, bronze-red columns. They gazed down a steep slope, and over the wild heathery waste that lay between them and what looked like a little wooded islet, rising out of the common into quite a mamelon, almost precipitous of side, and crowned with a heavy-looking edifice of brick, with other structures attached, all solid, plain, and terribly out of character with the wild landscape.
For, from where they stood, as it were on the very verge of the cultivated land, there was a stretch of miles upon miles of rolling surface, here sand, there bog, the one brown and purple with the heather or yellow with the gorse, the other in little patches of vivid green or creamy pink, where the sphagnum grew, and the cotton rushes had their home.
“What a desolate looking spot it is,” said the major thoughtfully, as they watched the active little figure tripping along the sandy road; “and yet it has its beauties after all.”
“Ye-es, I suppose it has,” said Glynne, “but I never think about its being ugly or beautiful.”
“No, my dear, you don’t,” said the major half pettishly; “and that’s what annoys me. Here you are, as beautiful a girl as well can be.”
“Am I, uncle, dear?” said Glynne, with the same calm, pleasant smile.
“Are you? Why of course you are, and with a splendid intellect, only you won’t use it.”
“Don’t scold me, uncle,” said the girl, creeping closer to him, “I don’t want to be clever, I don’t want to know more than I know. I am so happy: why should I change?”
The old man’s brow grew knotty and corrugated, partly, from perplexity, partly from annoyance, and he gazed sharply down at the sweet face looking lovingly in his.