In the valley night still hung like gauze under the trees, but the top
of the hill was glittering with sunshine.
"Why, we've hardly come halfway!" she said.
Her husband, plodding along behind her, nodded ruefully.
"Hardly," he said.
In her slim prettiness Athalia Hall looked like a girl, but she
was thirty-four. Part of the girlishness lay in the smoothness
of her white forehead and in the sincere intensity of her gaze.
She wore a blue linen dress, and there was a little, soft, blue scarf
under her chin; her white hat, with pink roses and loops
of gray-blue ribbon, shadowed eager, unhumorous eyes, the color
of forget-me-nots. Her husband was her senior by several years--
a large, loose-limbed man, with a scholarly face and mild,
calm eyes--eyes that were full of a singular tenacity of purpose.
Just now his face showed the fatigue of the long climb up-hill;
and when his wife, stopping to look back over the glistening tops
of the birches, said, "I believe it's half a mile to the top yet!"
he agreed, breathlessly. "Hard work!" he said.
"It will be worth it when I get to the top and can see the view!"
she declared, and began to climb again.
"All the same, this road will be mighty hot when the sun gets full
on it," her husband said; and added, anxiously, "I wish I had made
you rest in the station until train-time." She flung out her hands
with an exclamation: "Rest! I hate rest!"
"Hold on, and I'll give you a stick," he called to her;
"it's a help when you're climbing.
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