"It's nobody but old Nannette, with white bows in her cap," said Louise, laughing. "Mademoiselle's eyes are deceiving her."
"Is not that M. de Fraconville?" resumed Adeline, pointing to a gentleman who had just come in view, round the opposite corner.
"Something must have taken your eyesight today, Adeline," exclaimed Rose, who was at the other window; "it's a head and half too tall for M. de Fraconville."
"You say right," meekly sighed Adeline; "my sight is dim, and looking on the white snow has rendered it more so. Take me back again."
It will be her last look at outdoor life.
They wheeled her into the other room, and settled her comfortably on her chair, near the fire, her head on the pillows and her feet on a footstool. Rose followed, and took up a light work to read to her.
"Not that," said Adeline, motioning away the volume in Rose's hands; "it is time I had done with such. There is ANOTHER Book there, Rose."
In coming in from church last Sunday, I laid my Bible and Prayer-book down in Adeline's room, and forgot them. It was towards these she pointed. Rose took up the Bible.
"Where shall I read?" she asked, sitting down. Adeline could not tell her. The one was almost as ignorant as the other. The Bible, to Adeline, has been a sealed book, and Rose never opens it but as a matter of form. Rose turned over its leaves in indecision. "So many chapters!" she whispered to me, pleadingly, "Tell me which to fix upon."
"Take the Prayer-book," interrupted Adeline, "and read me your Service for the Burial of the Dead."