same
moment. The very houses looked unfamiliarly built, and even the letters
of printed names of hotels and shops had a frivolous, spindly
appearance--elegant but frail. The air was different from English air.
Some _bouillon_ and a slice of fowl were very acceptable at the
restaurant at the station, after the business of examining the luggage
was over. Hannah, evidently nourishing a sense of injury against the
natives for their eccentric jargon, and against the universe for the
rush and discomfort of the last quarter of an hour, was disposed to
express her feelings by a marked lack of relish for her food. She
regarded Hadria's hearty appetite with a disdainful expression. Martha
ate bread and butter and fruit. She was to have some milk that had been
brought for her, when they were _en route_ again.

"_Tout le monde en voiture!_" Within five minutes, the train was
puffing across the wastes of blowing sand that ran along the coast,
beyond the town. The child, who had become accustomed to the noise and
movement, behaved better than had been expected. She seemed to take
pleasure in looking out of the window at the passing trees. Hannah was
much struck with this sign of awakening intelligence. It was more than
the good nurse showed herself. She scarcely condescended to glance at
the panorama of French fields, French hills and streams that were
rushing by. How pale and ethereal they were, these Gallic coppices and
woodlands! And with what a dainty lightness the foliage spread itself to
the sun, French to its graceful finger-tips! That grey old house, with
high lichen-stained roof and narrow windows--where but in sunny France
could one see its like?--and the little farmsteads and villages, full of
indescribable charm. One felt oneself in a land of artists. There was no
inharmonious, no unfitting thing anywhere. Man had wedded himself to
Nature, and his works seemed to receive her seal and benediction.
English landscape was beautiful, and it had a particular charm to be
found nowhere else in the world; but in revenge, there was something
here that England could not boast. Was it fanciful to see in the
characteristics of vegetation and scenery, the origin or expression of
the difference of the two races at their greatest?

"Ah, if I were only a painter!"

They were passing some fields where, in the slanting rays of the sun,
peasants in blue blouses and several women were bending over their toil.
It was a subject often chosen