Angela was glad of the excuse of Isabey’s illness to keep the house quiet. Colonel Tremaine retired to his library; the day to him was one of bitter introspection. Lyddon, whom no weather could daunt, went for a tramp in the snow. Angela busied herself with her household affairs and then wrote a letter to Neville and afterwards to Mrs. Tremaine, Richard, and Archie. It was the first time in her short life she had been separated from them all on Christmas day.
It was twelve o’clock before Isabey was dressed and helped into the study. There he found Angela sitting in a low chair reading. With Mammy Tulip’s help, she made him comfortable on the old leather sofa drawn close to the glowing fire. Hector, having cheerfully permitted Mammy Tulip to perform all the services which Isabey’s disability required, was on the spot to assume the direction of things and to compare the campaign of Joshua round the walls of Jericho with General Scott’s entrance into the City of Mexico.
He was, however, rudely cut short by Mammy Tulip hustling him out of the way while she brought Isabey the inevitable “something hot.” Hector retired with Mammy Tulip to have it out on the back porch, and Angela and Isabey were left alone together.
“Mr. Lyddon will have George Charteris in the dining room every morning after this,” she said. “This is to be your sitting room and you are to send everybody out of it when you feel like it; Uncle Tremaine, Mr. Lyddon, and me.”
“I shan’t send you away,” said Isabey in a low voice and quite involuntarily. Angela blushed deeply.
She rose and went to the window through which was seen a world all white under a menacing leaden sky. Even the river was covered with snow and its voice was frozen.
“I never mind being snowbound,” she said, coming back to the fire. “It always seems to me as if I could think and read better in winter than in summer.”
“And in summer you enjoy and feel. Is it not like that?” asked Isabey.
“Yes,” replied Angela, smiling. “When I was a little girl and Mr. Lyddon would talk to me about Nature, I thought Nature was a great goddess and was smiling in the summer when the sun shone and the birds chirped, and in the autumn, when everything was dull and gray and quiet, that the goddess was in the sulks. Then in winter when the snow and ice came I thought Nature was in a bad humor and had quarreled with her lover, the sun. What strange notions children have!”
“And what a strange, poetic little child you must have been!”