go
on. And then one began, little by little, to get hardened,--of course
I'm only now beginning to feel that!--and it seems like being born
again, with a quite new body, that one can make--yes, _make_--do as one
likes. That's what the soldiers tell me--about _their_ training. And
they wonder at it, as I do.'

'My dear, you're horribly thin,' interrupted Hester.

'Oh, not too thin!' said Nelly, complacently.

Then she lifted up her eyes suddenly, and saw the lake in a dazzle of
light, and Silver How, all purple, as of old; yet another family of wild
duck swimming where the river issued from the lake; and just beyond, the
white corner of the house where she and George had spent their few days
of bliss. Slowly, the eyes filled with brimming tears. She threw off
her hat and veil, and slipping to the grass, she laid her head against
her friend's knee, and there was a long silence.

Hester broke it at last.

'I want you to come a little way up the fell, and look at a daffodil
field. We'll leave a message, and Cicely can follow us there.' And then
she added, not without trepidation--'and I asked her to bring William,
if he had time.'

Nelly was silent a moment, and then said quietly---'Thank you. I'm glad
you did.'

They left the garden and wandered through some rocky fields on the side
of the fell, till they came to one where Linnaeus or any other pious
soul might well have gone upon his knees for joy. Some loving hand had
planted it with daffodils--the wild Lent lily of the district, though
not now very plentiful about the actual lakes. And the daffodils had
come back rejoicing to their kingdom, and made it their own again. They
ran in lines and floods, in troops and skirmishers, all through the
silky grass, and round the trunks of the old knotted oaks, that hung as
though by one foot from the emerging rocks and screes. Above, the bloom
of the wild cherries made a wavering screen of silver between the
daffodils and the May sky; amid the blossom the golden-green of the oaks
struck a strong riotous note; and far below, at their feet, the lake lay
blue, with all the sky within it, and the softness of the larch-woods on
its banks.

Nelly dropped into the grass among the daffodils. One could not have
called her the spirit of the spring--the gleeful, earthly spring--as it
would have been natural to do, in her honeymoon days. And yet, as Hester
watched her, she seemed in her pale, changed beauty to be in some
strange ha