"I'm afraid it's rather a long drive-for you, Miss Shirley," he ventured,
with a glance at her face, which looked very little under her hat. "The
driver says it's five miles round through the marshes."
"Oh, I shall not mind," she said, courageously, if not cheerfully, and he
did not feel authorized further to recognize the fact that she was an
invalid, or at best a convalescent.
"These wintry tree-forms are fine, though," he found himself obliged to
conclude his apology, rather irrelevantly, as the wheels of the rattling,
and tilting carry all crunched the surface of the road in the succession
of jerks responding to the alternate walk and gallop of the horse.
"Yes, they are," Miss Shirley answered, looking around with a certain
surprise, as if seeing them now for the first time. "So much variety of
color; and that burnished look that some of them have." The trees, far
and near, were giving their tones and lustres in the low December sun.
"Yes," he said, "it's decidedly more refined than the autumnal coloring
we brag of."
"It is," she approved, as with novel conviction. "The landscape is
really beautiful. So nice and flat," she added.
He took her intention, and he said, as he craned his neck out of the
carryall to include the nearer roadside stretches, with their low bushes
lifting into remoter trees, "It's restful in a way that neither the
mountains nor the sea, quite manage.
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