"Look at the silly blue-caps, my beauty," she crooned,

holding up the infant to the window, where shone the white

garden, and the blue-tits scuffling in the snow: "Look at the

silly blue-caps, my darling, having a fight in the snow! Look at

them, my bird--beating the snow about with their wings, and

shaking their heads. Oh, aren't they wicked things, wicked

things! Look at their yellow feathers on the snow there! They'll

miss them, won't they, when they're cold later on.

"Must we tell them to stop, must we say 'stop it' to them, my

bird? But they are naughty, naughty! Look at them!" Suddenly her

voice broke loud and fierce, she rapped the pane sharply.

"Stop it," she cried, "stop it, you little nuisances. Stop

it!" She called louder, and rapped the pane more sharply. Her

voice was fierce and imperative.

"Have more sense," she cried.

"There, now they're gone. Where have they gone, the silly

things? What will they say to each other? What will they say, my

lambkin? They'll forget, won't they, they'll forget all about

it, out of their silly little heads, and their blue caps."

After a moment, she turned her bright face to her

husband.

"They were really fighting, they were really fierce

with each other!" she said, her voice keen with excitement and

wonder, as if she belonged to the birds' world, were identified

with the race of birds.

"Ay, they'll fight, will blue-caps," he said, glad when she

turned to him with her glow from elsewhere. He came and stood

beside her and looked out at the marks on the snow where the

birds had scuffled, and at the yew trees' burdened, white and

black branches. What was the appeal it made to him, what was the

question of her bright face, what was the challenge he was

called to answer? He did not know. But as he stood there he felt

some responsibility which made him glad, but uneasy, as if he

must put out his own light. And he could not move as yet.

Anna loved the child very much, oh, very much. Yet still she

was not quite fulfilled. She had a slight expectant feeling, as

of a door half opened. Here she was, safe and still in

Cossethay. But she felt as if she were not in Cossethay at all.

She was straining her eyes to something beyond. And from her

Pisgah mount, which she had attained, what could she see? A

faint, gleaming horizon, a long way off, and a rainbow like an

archway, a shadow-door with faintly coloured coping above it.

Must she be moving thither?

Something she had not, something she did not grasp, could not

arrive at. There was something beyond her. But why must she

start on the journey? She stood so safely on the Pisgah

mountain.




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