It was morning--not yet nine o'clock--and the snow shovellers were only beginning here and there to relieve the encumbered footways, and contribute another layer to the solidly-packed thicknesses of snow and ice which winter had been building in the streets, a foot or two above the neighbouring side walks. The snow had ceased to fall, and the laden clouds which had brought it having burst and dissolved themselves, the sky was a clear pale vault, filled with diffused and dazzling brightness.
From a door there issued a young girl, trim and slight. She was dressed in brown--brown close-fitting, warm and shaggy--muffled as to ears and chin in a wisp of "cloud" of the same colour, out of which there peered the daintiest little pink nose and a pair of eyes of merry blue, shining as they looked out from under the edge of her sealskin cap, with the gleeful twinkle of a squirrel's in the snugness of his nest. I would have said they were like fawn's eyes, save that it has a sentimental association which does not accord with Muriel Stanley, now arrived at the age of fifteen--the border land between child and woman--and fancy free. She stood on the doorsteps with a roll of music under her arm, and her hands in the pockets of her jacket. Muff she had none, it is in the way with active people who do their five or six miles on snow-shoes of winter afternoons, and "toboggan" down slopes in the moonlight.
The air was so chill it seemed to catch the breath on emerging from the indoor warmth; but it was so transfused with brightness and dancing sunshine that it sent the blood coursing quicker through the veins, and prickled in the nostrils with an exhilarating joy, like the sting of the air bubbles in effervescing wine.
The doorsteps were as yet unswept, and deep in snow, the shovellers being still a good many doors off, and Muriel stood on the top looking down and around ere she made the knee-deep plunge, when a voice accosted her coming down the street.
"Miss Muriel! yet surely not, at this hour of the morning."
"Yes, it's me, Mr. Gerald," she said, turning round. "What would any one stay indoors for on a jolly morning like this?"
"But you do not go out at this hour of the morning in general?"
"Neither do you; I know that much. We see the business people go past--M. Petitôt and the Ferretings--about half-past eight, but you gentlemen of the Stock Board never by any chance before half-past ten. If I were a man, and lazy, I would be a stockbroker. No going back to the office in the evening!"
"Ha, ha! you are severe this morning. Does that come of being out so early?"
"That? Oh! I have to go for my music lesson this morning; if I am to have one at all. Mr. Selby has fallen on the ice and sprained both his ankle and his wrist. I have a note from him, written with his left hand, asking me to come to his house, as he cannot come to me--written with his left hand, actually; think of the trouble it must have cost him!--so I could not refuse to go."