"What in the world do you want here? I thought you were all in bed!" "Go away, children! I can't be troubled with you now!" cried the student, looking over his shoulder, with the pen between his fingers. But, before he had hammered out the very first rhyme, the door opened, and Primrose and Periwinkle made their appearance. After the meal was over, he betook himself to the study with a purpose, I rather imagine, to write an ode, or two or three sonnets, or verses of some kind or other, in praise of the purple and golden clouds which he had seen around the setting sun. When the sun was fairly down, our friend Eustace went home to eat his supper. He was glad that the children were not with him for their lively spirits and tumble-about activity would quite have chased away his higher and graver mood, so that he would merely have been merry (as he had already been, the whole day long), and would not have known the loveliness of the winter sunset among the hills. And, it being now almost sunset, Eustace thought that he had never beheld anything so fresh and beautiful as the scene. Thence he strolled to the shore of the lake, and beheld a white, untrodden plain before him, stretching from his own feet to the foot of Monument Mountain. There were adamantine icicles glittering around all its little cascades. So he ran away, and went into the woods, and thence to the margin of Shadow Brook, where he could hear the streamlet grumbling along, under great overhanging banks of snow and ice, which would scarcely let it see the light of day. And then, to punish Cousin Eustace for advising them to dig such a tumble-down cavern, the children attacked him in a body, and so bepelted him with snowballs that he was fain to take to his heels. Unluckily, just as it was completed, and the party had squeezed themselves into the hollow, down came the roof upon their heads, and buried every soul of them alive! The next moment, up popped all their little heads out of the ruins, and the tall student's head in the midst of them, looking hoary and venerable with the snow-dust that had got amongst his brown curls. When they had grown tired of sliding down hill, Eustace set the children to digging a cave in the biggest snow-drift that they could find. But, behold, halfway down, the sledge hit against a hidden stump, and flung all four of its passengers into a heap and, on gathering themselves up, there was no little Squash-Blossom to be found! Why, what could have become of the child? And while they were wondering and staring about, up started Squash-Blossom out of a snow-bank, with the reddest face you ever saw, and looking as if a large scarlet flower had suddenly sprouted up in midwinter.
#HERCULES AND THE APPLES OF THE HESPERIDES FULL#
And, once, Eustace Bright took Periwinkle, Sweet Fern, and Squash-Blossom, on the sledge with him, by way of insuring a safe passage and down they went, full speed.
Well, what a day of frosty sport was this! They slid down hill into the valley, a hundred times, nobody knows how far and, to make it all the merrier, upsetting their sledges, and tumbling head over heels, quite as often as they came safely to the bottom. No sooner was breakfast over, than the whole party, well muffled in furs and woolens, floundered forth into the midst of the snow. How exceedingly pleasant! And, to make it all the better, it was cold enough to nip one's nose short off! If people have but life enough in them to bear it, there is nothing that so raises the spirits, and makes the blood ripple and dance so nimbly, like a brook down the slope of a hill, as a bright, hard frost. But, while waiting for breakfast, the small populace of Tanglewood had scratched peep-holes with their finger-nails, and saw with vast delight that-unless it were one or two bare patches on a precipitous hill-side, or the gray effect of the snow, intermingled with the black pine forest-all nature was as white as a sheet. The frost-work had so covered the window-panes that it was hardly possible to get a glimpse at the scenery outside. At any rate, it entirely cleared away during the night and when the sun arose the next morning, it shone brightly down on as bleak a tract of hill-country here in Berkshire, as could be seen anywhere in the world. THE snow-storm lasted another day but what became of it afterwards, I cannot possibly imagine.
0 kommentar(er)
