"Oh yes, Maam!"
"You won't fear the deep snow, and the wind and cold, and the steep hill?"
"Oh no, Maam, I won't mind them a bit; but, Maam, Miss Alice told me to ask you why you loved better to live up here than down where it is warmer. I shouldn't ask if she hadn't said I might."
"Ellen has a great fancy for getting at the reason of everything, Mrs. Vawse," said Alice, smiling.
"You wonder anybody should choose it, don't you, Miss Ellen?" said the old lady.
"Yes, Maam, a little."
"I'll tell you the reason, my child. It is for the love of my old home, and the memory of my young days. Till I was as old as you are, and a little older, I lived among the mountains and upon them; and after that, for many a year, they were just before my eyes every day, stretching away for more than one hundred miles, and piled up one above another, fifty times as big as any you ever saw; these are only molehills to them. I loved them oh! how I love them still! If I have one unsatisfied wish," said the old lady, turning to Alice, "it is to see my Alps again; but that will never be. Now, Miss Ellen, it is not that I fancy when I get to the top of this hill that I am among my own mountains, but I can breathe better here than down in the plain. I feel more free; and in the village I would not live for gold, unless that duty bade me."
"But all alone, so far from everybody," said Ellen.
"I am never lonely; and, old as I am, I don't mind a long walk or a rough road, any more than your young feet do."
"But isn't it very cold?" said Ellen.