We shall slip through all right,
without any bother or unpleasantness, and we can have a look at them
through their windows if you like, and see what they're doing."

The rapid nightfall of mid-December had quite beset the little village
as they approached it on soft feet over a first thin fall of powdery
snow. Little was visible but squares of a dusky orange-red on either
side of the street, where the firelight or lamplight of each cottage
overflowed through the casements into the dark world without. Most of
the low latticed windows were innocent of blinds, and to the
lookers-in from outside, the inmates, gathered round the tea-table,
absorbed in handiwork, or talking with laughter and gesture, had each
that happy grace which is the last thing the skilled actor shall
capture--the natural grace which goes with perfect unconsciousness of
observation. Moving at will from one theatre to another, the two
spectators, so far from home themselves, had something of wistfulness
in their eyes as they watched a cat being stroked, a sleepy child
picked up and huddled off to bed, or a tired man stretch and knock out
his pipe on the end of a smouldering log.

But it was from one little window, with its blind drawn down, a mere
blank transparency on the night, that the sense of home and the little
curtained world within walls--the larger stressful world of outside
Nature shut out and forgotten--most pulsated. Close against the white
blind hung a bird-cage, clearly silhouetted, every wire, perch, and
appurtenance distinct and recognisable, even to yesterday's dull-edged
lump of sugar. On the middle perch the fluffy occupant, head tucked
well into feathers, seemed so near to them as to be easily stroked,
had they tried; even the delicate tips of his plumped-out plumage
pencilled plainly on the illuminated screen. As they looked, the
sleepy little fellow stirred uneasily, woke, shook himself, and raised
his head. They could see the gape of his tiny beak as he yawned in a
bored sort of way, looked round, and then settled his head into his
back again, while the ruffled feathers gradually subsided into perfect
stillness. Then a gust of bitter wind took them in the back of the
neck, a small sting of frozen sleet on the skin woke them as from a
dream, and they knew their toes to be cold and their legs tired, and
their own home distant a weary way.

Once beyond the village, where the cottages ceased abruptly, on either
side of the road they