It's a great
compliment!"
"Is it? Well, I'm glad to know. But Mr. Templestowe never used such a
phrase, I'm sure."
"No, he didn't," admitted Phil; "but that's what he meant."
So the winter drew on,--the strange, beautiful Colorado winter,--with
weeks of golden sunshine broken by occasional storms of wind and sand, or
by skurries of snow which made the plains white for a few hours and then
vanished, leaving them dry and firm as before. The nights were often
cold,--so cold that comfortables and blankets seemed all too few, and
Clover roused with a shiver to think that presently it would be her duty
to get up and start the fires so that Phil might find a warm house when he
came downstairs. Then, before she knew it, fires would seem oppressive;
first one window and then another would be thrown up, and Phil would be
sitting on the piazza in the balmy sunshine as comfortable as on a June
morning at home. It was a wonderful climate; and as Clover wrote her
father, the winter was better even than the summer, and was certainly
doing Phil more good. He was able to spend hours every day in the open
air, walking, or riding Dr. Hope's horse, and improved steadily. Clover
felt very happy about him.
This early rising and fire-making were the hardest things she had to
encounter, though all the housekeeping proved more onerous than, in her
inexperience, she had expected it to be.
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