"Oh! because they smell; and it seems so much more like a real sacrifice, somehow, if it smells." "I see. What ideas you do get into your head!" But Elisabeth's volatile thoughts had flown off in another direction. "You really have got awfully nice-coloured hair," she remarked, Chris having taken his cap off for the sake of coolness, as he was heated with his toil. "I do wish I had light hair like yours. Angels, and goddesses, and princesses, and people of that kind always have golden hair; but only bad fairies and cruel stepmothers have nasty dark hair like me. I think it is horrid to have dark hair." "I don't: I like dark hair best; and I don't think yours is half bad." Christopher never overstated a case; but then one had the comfort of knowing that he always meant what he said, and frequently a good deal more. "Don't you really, Chris? I think it is hideous," replied Elisabeth, taking one of her elf-locks between her fingers and examining it as if it were a sample of material; "it is like that ugly brown seaweed which shows which way the wind blows--no, I mean that shows whether it is going to rain or not." "Never mind; I've seen lots of people with uglier hair than yours." Chris really could be of great consolation when he tried. "Aren't the trees lovely when they have got all their leaves off?" said Elisabeth, her thoughts wandering again. "I believe I like them better now than I do in summer. Now they are like the things you wish for, and in the summer they are like the things you get; and the things you get are never half as nice as the things you wish for." This was too subtle for Christopher. "I like them best with the leaves on; but anyhow they are nicer to look at than the chimneys that we see from our house. You can't think how gloomy it is for your rooms to look out on nothing but smoke and chimneys and furnaces. When you go to bed at night it's all red, and when you get up in the morning it's all black." "I should like to live in a house like that. I love the smoke and the chimneys and the furnaces--they are all so big and strong and full of life; and they make you think." "What on earth do they make you think about?" Elisabeth's gray eyes grew dreamy. "They make me think that the Black Country is a wilderness that we are all travelling through; and over it there is always the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, to tell us which way to go. I make up tales to myself about the people in the wilderness; and how they watch the pillar, and how it keeps them from idling in their work, or selling bad iron, or doing anything that is horrid or mean, because it is a sign to them that God is with them, just as it used to be to the Children of Israel."