December - Page 2

knees, looking up at me with eyes full of love.
Outside the dazzling snow and sunshine, inside the bright room
and happy faces--I thought of those yellow fogs and shivered.
The library is not used by the Man of Wrath ; it is
neutral ground where we meet in the evenings for an hour before
he disappears into his own rooms--a series of very smoky dens
in the southeast corner of the house. It looks, I am afraid,
rather too gay for an ideal library; and its colouring,
white and yellow, is so cheerful as to be almost frivolous.
There are white bookcases all round the walls, and there
is a great fireplace, and four windows, facing full south,
opening on to my most cherished bit of garden, the bit round
the sun-dial; so that with so much colour and such a big fire
and such floods of sunshine it has anything but a sober air,
in spite of the venerable volumes filling the shelves.
Indeed, I should never be surprised if they skipped down from
their places, and, picking up their leaves, began to dance.

With this room to live in, I can look forward with perfect equanimity
to being snowed up for any time Providence thinks proper; and to go into
the garden in its snowed-up state is like going into a bath of purity.
The first breath on opening the door is so ineffably pure that it makes
me gasp, and I feel a black and sinful object in the midst of all
the spotlessness.
Yesterday I sat out of doors near the sun-dial the whole afternoon,
with the thermometer so many degrees below freezing that it
will be weeks finding its way up again; but there was no wind,
and beautiful sunshine, and I was well wrapped up in furs.
I even had tea brought out there, to the astonishment of the menials,
and sat till long after the sun had set, enjoying the frosty air.
I had to drink the tea very quickly, for it showed a strong inclination
to begin to freeze. After the sun had gone down the rooks came home
to their nests in the garden with a great fuss and fluttering, and many
hesitations and squabbles before they settled on their respective trees.
They flew over my head in hundreds with a mighty swish of wings,
and when they had arranged themselves comfortably, an intense hush fell
upon the garden, and the house began to look like a Christmas card,
with its white roof against the clear, pale green of the western sky,
and lamplight shining in the windows.

I had been reading a Life of Luther, lent me by our parson,
in the intervals between looking round me and being happy.
He came one day with the book and begged me to read it,
having discovered that my interest in Luther was not as living
as it ought to be; so I took it out with me into the garden,
because the dullest book takes on a certain saving grace
if read out of