When the rose tints faded out, she turned again; there was a mist in her dark eyes, and a perceptible quiver about her pretty lips; she spoke in a half-whisper, as of one just awakened from a happy vision:
"Did you ever see anything so glorious? and yet I felt all the time as if I must kneel and look upon it with reverence."
I did not blame Mr. Dide, nor the Deacon; they couldn't help it; I envied her father.
"When we can have our backs to the afternoon sun, with a mountain range to the east of us, these magnificent carnivals of shadows are not uncommon."
"Did you see the baby's bonnet? was it not too cute for anything?" and then, half-musingly to me, "you have lived in these beautiful mountains since before the time I was born—you ought to be happy!"
I told her that happiness was my normal condition, and then she wanted to know of me if I had ever read Ruskin, and I said I hadn't.
"I wish he could have seen what we have this afternoon."
"He would have criticised and found fault with it."
"It is unkind of you to say so, knowing nothing of him."
The rebuke was quick, earnest, and, I confessed to myself, not wholly unwarranted. I determined to read Ruskin, and I presume that if the Major and the others had not just then drifted up to us, I should have been led off after "Darwin and those fellows." With such disciples the philosophers in question might effect a revolution rapidly.