"Yes, mother, we have reached the top at last and here is the rustic bench on which we usually sit and watch the sun go down behind those blue and misty hills in the distance."
"Ah! those hills, Cecile. How I have always loved them. To me this has ever seemed the fairest spot on earth, and the view from this hill just at sunset the most beautiful I have ever seen. It is ten long years since my eyes have beheld it, but in my mind I still see it all so clearly. Tell me it is all there, Cecile, just as it was on that evening so many, many years ago when I first looked upon its beauties. Your dear father had just brought me, a happy bride, here to his northern home. We walked up the hill together to watch the sun set and I thought then I had never seen a lovelier view: the green fields of waving corn, and the apple orchards all in blossom, sloping down gradually to the river; the river itself tumbling and tossing madly over the waterfall far up there to the left, then swirling and eddying on for a space, only to grow calm once more quietly, steadily, resume its placid journey to the ocean. Beyond the river, those wonderful forests, dark, mysterious and silent. They rise and rise, higher, ever higher, and terminate at last in the blue and misty hills of which you were just speaking. I love it all, Cecile, and I could not bear to think that any part of it had changed with the advancing years. Tell me it is just the same; tell me it is all there as it was so long ago."
"Yes, mother dear," answered the younger woman, "it is all there just as it has ever been; the fields and the river, the forests and the hills beyond."
Cecile neglected to mention that the fields were now mere barren stubble and that the river was visible only here and there as it peeped through between the many buildings lining its banks; immense buildings of factory and mill, smaller structures, cottages and tenement houses occupied by the workers in factory and mill. She supposed the forests were still there but the day had been very sultry with scarce a breath of air stirring and a heavy pall of smoke from the huge chimneys hung over the valley, hiding everything which lay beyond. Only the tops of the distant hills rose in triumph above it.
"I am glad to think it is all unchanged," said the mother with a sigh of content. "I know it is foolish to feel as I do about it, but it would be a real grief to me to think that my beautiful valley had been sacrificed to the need or the greed of advancing civilization."
"God has been very good to me, Cecile, and I thank Him with all my heart for the blessings He has sent me to compensate for that one dreadful calamity, your dear father's sudden death ten years ago and my long illness and subsequent blindness. As I sat to-day in my little garden listening to the twittering of the birds, and inhaling the fragrance of my flowers, I was thinking how peaceful and happy my life is and how grateful I should be. You know, dear, just occasionally I long to be able to see again, to see the birds and the flowers, to see the beautiful world around me. That is very wrong and wicked I know, and I chase the rebellious wish away by thinking of my many blessings, especially of you and my Philippe. You have both been my comfort and consolation. By the way, dear, no letter has come from Philippe to-day?"
"No, mother, not yet."
"It is strange that we have not heard from him. This is the first time he has not written to me for my birthday."
"But he did not forget you, mother. Are you not wearing his beautiful gift to you which arrived this morning?"
"No, he did not forget," replied the older woman, as her fingers strayed lovingly over the lace scarf resting so lightly on her snow-white hair. "My Philippe never forgets and that is why I worried just a little this morning when his usual birthday letter did not come. Then, this afternoon, a sudden idea occurred to me which made me very happy. Shall I tell you what it was, Cecile? I am quite sure I have discovered the reason why Philippe did not write me for my birthday."