His sister always made him feel like a disgraced dog. He shuffled on
his feet.
"She's a good girl," he muttered at last, and then with a confused
look about him, as though he were searching for something, he
stumbled out of the room.
Meanwhile Maggie went on her way. She chose instinctively her path,
through the kitchen garden at the back of the village, down the hill
by the village street, over the little bridge that crossed the rocky
stream of the Dreot, and up the steep hill that led on to the
outskirts of Rothin Moor. The day, although she had no eyes for it,
was one of those sudden impulses of misty warmth that surprise the
Glebeshire frosts. The long stretch of the moor was enwrapped by a
thin silver network of haze; the warmth of the sun, seen so dimly
that it was like a shadow reflected in a mirror, struck to the very
heart of the soil. Where but yesterday there had been iron frost
there was now soft yielding earth; it was as though the heat of the
central fires of the world pressed dimly upward through many miles
of heavy weighted resistance, straining to the light and air. Larks,
lost in golden mist, circled in space; Maggie could feel upon her
face and neck and hands the warm moisture; the soil under her feet,
now hard, now soft, seemed to tremble with some happy anticipation;
the moor, wrapped in its misty colour, had no bounds; the world was
limitless space with hidden streams, hidden suns.
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