He was still for a moment, as if the sudden reference to his cousin occasioned him surprise; and that not altogether of a pleasant kind. Though I did not see why it should have done.
"I was not speaking of Hetty. Nor am I anxious to, just now."
"Aren't you? Have you quarrelled with her, as well?"
"As well? Why do you say as well?"
"Oh, I don't know. You're always quarrelling."
"That's not true."
"Thank you. Is that a snub? Or merely a compliment?"
"Molly, why will you treat me like this? It's you who treat me like a child, not I you."
"There's the lake at last, thank goodness!"
I did not care if it was rude or not. I was delighted to see it, so I said so plainly. What is more, I tore off towards it as hard as I could. My rush was so unexpected that I was clean away before he knew it. All the same he reached the lake as soon as I did. He could run, just as he could do everything else. The ice looked splendid, smooth as a sheet of glass. All about were the pines with their frosted branches. They seemed to stand in rows, so that they looked like the pillars in the aisles of some great cathedral. And then pine-trees always are so solemn and so still.