"You are a strange girl," said Miss Cadwallader, when they had walked in company with ill-humour as far as the brow of the hill.
"I am glad you think so."
"You are a great deal too old for your age."
"I am not!" said Elizabeth, who shading her eyes with her hand had again stopped to look over the landscape. "I should be very sorry to think that. You are two years older, Rose, in body, than I am; and ten years older in spirit, this minute."
"Does the spirit grow old faster than the body?" said Rose laughing.
"Yes — sometimes. — How pretty all that is!"
'That' meant the wide view, below and before them, of river and hill and meadow. It was said with a little breath of a sigh, and Elizabeth turned away and began to go down the road.
Winifred gave it as her opinion to her mother privately, after they got home, that Miss Haye was a very ill-behaved young lady.
CHAPTER XII.
The thing we long for, that we are,
For one transcendent moment,
Before the Present, poor and bare,
Can make its sneering comment.
Still through our paltry stir and strife
Glows down the wished Ideal,
And Longing moulds in clay what Life
Carves in the marble Real.
LOWELL.