“You must find this view very pleasant,” said I, at last.

“Oh, sir,” tears starting in her eyes, “the first time I looked out of this window, I said ‘never, never shall I weary of this.’”

“And what wearies you of it now?”

“I don’t know,” while a tear fell; “but it is not the view, it is Marianna.”

Some months back, her brother, only seventeen, had come hither, a long way from the other side, to cut wood and burn coal, and she, elder sister, had accompanied, him.  Long had they been orphans, and now, sole inhabitants of the sole house upon the mountain.  No guest came, no traveler passed.  The zigzag, perilous road was only used at seasons by the coal wagons.  The brother was absent the entire day, sometimes the entire night.  When at evening, fagged out, he did come home, he soon left his bench, poor fellow, for his bed; just as one, at last, wearily quits that, too, for still deeper rest.  The bench, the bed, the grave.

Silent I stood by the fairy window, while these things were being told.

“Do you know,” said she at last, as stealing from her story, “do you know who lives yonder?—­I have never been down into that country—­away off there, I mean; that house, that marble one,” pointing far across the lower landscape; “have you not caught it? there, on the long hill-side:  the field before, the woods behind; the white shines out against their blue; don’t you mark it? the only house in sight.”

I looked; and after a time, to my surprise, recognized, more by its position than its aspect, or Marianna’s description, my own abode, glimmering much like this mountain one from the piazza.  The mirage haze made it appear less a farm-house than King Charming’s palace.

“I have often wondered who lives there; but it must be some happy one; again this morning was I thinking so.”

“Some happy one,” returned I, starting; “and why do you think that?  You judge some rich one lives there?”

“Rich or not, I never thought; but it looks so happy, I can’t tell how; and it is so far away.  Sometimes I think I do but dream it is there.  You should see it in a sunset.”

“No doubt the sunset gilds it finely; but not more than the sunrise does this house, perhaps.”

“This house?  The sun is a good sun, but it never gilds this house.  Why should it?  This old house is rotting.  That makes it so mossy.  In the morning, the sun comes in at this old window, to be sure—­boarded up, when first we came; a window I can’t keep clean, do what I may—­and half burns, and nearly blinds me at my sewing, besides setting the flies and wasps astir—­such flies and wasps as only lone mountain houses know.  See, here is the curtain—­this apron—­I try to shut it out with then.  It fades it, you see.  Sun gild this house? not that ever Marianna saw.”

“Because when this roof is gilded most, then you stay here within.”