“Looking through my wicket.”

I went back again to understand the wicket.  It had been made, she said, so that she might have fresh air in all weathers, without raising the windows.  In the night she could look out without danger of taking cold.  We looked over the autumn fields; the crows were flying seaward over the stubble, or settling in the branches of an old fir, standing alone, midway between the woods and the orchard.  The ground before us, rising so gradually, and shortening the horizon, reminded me of my childish notion that we were near the North Pole, and that if we could get behind the low rim of sky we should be in the Arctic Zone.

“The Northern Lights have not deserted us, Veronica?”

“No; they beckon me over there, in winter.”

“Do you never tire of this limited, monotonous view—­of a few uneven fields, squared by grim stone walls?”

“That is not all.  See those eternal travelers, the clouds, that hurry up from some mysterious region to go over your way, where I never look.  If the landscape were wider, I could never learn it.  And the orchard—­have you noticed that?  There are bird and butterfly lives in it, every year.  Why, morning and night are wonderful from these windows.  But I must say the charm vanishes if I go from them.  Surrey is not lovely.”  She closed the wicket, and sat down by the table.  My dullness vanished with her.  There might be something to interest me beneath the calm surface of our family life after all.

“Veronica, do you think mother is changed?  I think so.”

“She is always the same to me.  But I have had fears respecting her health.”

Outside the door I met Temperance, with a clothes-basket.

“Oh ho!” she said, “you are going the rounds.  Verry’s room beats all possessed, don’t it?  It is cleaned spick and span every three months.  She calls it inaugurating the seasons.  She is as queer as Dick’s hatband.  Have you any fine things to do up?”

Her question put me in mind of my trunks, and I hastened to them, with the determination of putting my room to rights.  The call to dinner interrupted me before I had begun, and the call to supper came before anything in the way of improvement had been accomplished.  My mind was chaotic by bed-time.  The picture of Veronica, reading by her wax candle, or looking through the wicket, collected and happy in her orderly perfection, came into my mind, and with it an admiration which never ceased, though I had no sympathy with her.  We seemed as far apart as when we were children.

I was eager for employment, promising to perform many tasks, but the attempt killed my purpose and interest.  My will was nerveless, when I contemplated Time, which stretched before me—­a vague, limitless sea; and I only kept Endeavor in view, near enough to be tormented.

One day father asked me to go to Milford, and I then asked him for money to spend for the adornment of my room.