There was no doubt that this breakfast was an improvement on breakfasts
that had gone before. Bread is mighty good when one has not had any for
nearly two months; and warm golden bread just out of the oven and made by
Dolly is more than mighty good. The coffee had undeniably an aroma that
it had not had of past mornings. And as you held up to the light,
delicately between thumb and finger, a little trout with crisply-curved
tail, and slipped it head first between eager white teeth, your eyes
smiled into two other eyes (like blue stars), smiling back at you over
just such another troutlet, golden crisp, entering in successive
movements between just such eager teeth (small pearly ones, these).
Oh, you Charles-Norton!
He wore a blanket on his back, undulating from his shoulders, over his
wings, to the ground. Dolly had put it there, fearing he would catch
cold. Now and then, by some reflex action of which Charles-Norton was
unconscious, the wings stirred uneasily to the burden and let it slip to
the ground, upon which Dolly, springing up with a laugh, quickly replaced
it. This happened so often that it became a game.
After breakfast Dolly, instead of throwing the dishes in a shallow spot
of the lake, as it was the habit of Master Charles-Norton, placed them in
a pot of boiling water, at the bottom of which, with wonder-eyes, he saw
them miraculously dissolve to brightness. "You're a genius, Dolly," he
said. She laughed, a silver peal that filled the clearing, then, going
into the cabin, returned with his pipe all filled. Nicodemus came to them
for his salt, then wandered off again. They sat side by side, their backs
against the cabin-wall, the meadow before them, sloping to the lake; he
smoked, and she was silent. The sun had risen. It inundated the western
slopes with a cascade of light; here and there on the crest glaciers
flashed signals; far to the west the plain palpitated liquidly; and
above, the sky domed very high, a miracle of pellucid azure. A big sigh
escaped Charles-Norton, with a blue wafture of smoke. "Isn't this
beautiful?" he said; "isn't it beautiful?"
She said nothing, and so he repeated, "Isn't it beautiful?" And then,
curious of her silence, he turned to her. She was looking about her, at
the trees, at the lake, and the great crags above, and as she looked,
with an unconscious movement, she withdrew closer to him. "It's awfully
big," she said, and her voice was almost a whisper.
"It's big with beauty," he said. "Look at the lake," he went on,
detailing with the pride of a suburban proprietor; "isn't it silvery and
fresh and clean!"
"It's cold, isn't it?" said Dolly.
"And the crest up there. Look at it. It is sculptured--domes, spires,
castles. And those gothic arches. They are like joined hands; the granite
prays. And see the glisten of that glacier in the haze, like a star in
the veil of a bride! It's all beautiful!"
"They're terribly big mountains, aren't they?" said Dolly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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