"It has the same colour and weight."
"No, it is only wet see this, and smell of it do you see the difference? Isn't it pleasant?"
"Everything is pleasant to-day," said he, smiling.
"I shall report you a cure. Come, I want to go a little higher and show you a view. Leave that, Hugh we have got enough."
But Hugh chose to finish an obstinate stump, and his companions went on without him. It was not very far up the mountain, and they came to a fine look-out point the same where Fleda and Mr. Carleton had paused long before on their quest after nuts. The wide spread of country was a white waste now; the delicate beauties of the snow were lost in the far view; and the distant Catskill showed wintrily against the fair blue sky. The air was gentle enough to invite them to stand still, after the exercise they had taken; and as they both looked in silence, Mr. Olmney observed that his companion's face settled into a gravity rather at variance with the expression it had worn.
"I should hardly think," said he, softly, "that you were looking through white spectacles, if you had not told us so."
"Oh a shade may come over what one is looking at, you know," said Fleda. But seeing that he still watched her inquiringly, she added
"I do not think a very wide landscape is ever gay in its effect upon the mind do you?"
"Perhaps I do not know," said he, his eyes turning to it again, as if to try what the effect was.
"My thoughts had gone back," said Fleda, "to a time a good while ago, when I was a child, and stood here in summer weather and I was thinking that the change in the landscape is something like that which years make in the mind."