SWITZERLAND.
"I liked the mountain girl best of all," thought Lucy. "I wonder
whether I shall ever get among the mountains again. There's a
great stick in the corner that Uncle Joe calls his alpenstock.
I'll go and read the names upon it. They are the names of all
the mountains where he has used it."
She read Mount Blanc, Mount Cenis, the Wengern, and so on; and of
course as she read and sung them over to herself, they lulled her
off into her wonderful dreams, and brought her this time into a
meadow, steep and sloping, but full of flowers, the loveliest
flowers, of all kinds, growing among the long grass that waved
over them. The fresh, clear air was so delicious that she almost
hoped she was back in her dear Tyrol; but the hills were not the
same. She saw upon the slope quantities of cows, goats, and sheep,
feeding just as on the Tyrolese Alps; but beyond was a dark row of
pines, and above, in the sky as it were, rose all round great sharp
points--like clouds for their whiteness, but not in their straight,
jagged outlines. And here and there the deep gray clefts between
seemed to spread into white rivers, or over the ruddy purple of the
half-distance came sharp white lines darting downwards.
As she sat up in the grass and looked about her, a bark startled
her. A dog began to growl, bark, and dance round her, so that she
would have been much frightened if the next moment a voice had not
called him off--"Fie, Brilliant, down; let the little girl alone.
He is good, Madamoiselle, never fear. He helps me keep the cows."
"Who are you, then?"
"I am Maurice, the little herd-boy. I live with my grandmother, and
work for her."
"What, in keeping cows?"
"Yes; and look here!"
"Oh, the delicious little cottage! It has eaves and windows, and
balconies, and a door, and little cows and sheep, and men and women,
all in pretty white wood! You did not make it, Maurice?"
"Yes, truly I did; I cut it out with my knife, all myself."
"How clever you must be. And what shall you do with it?"
"I shall watch for a carriage with ladies winding up that long road;
and then I shall stand and take off my hat, and hold out my cottage.
Perhaps they will buy it, and then I shall have enough to get
grandmother a warm gown for the winter. When I grow bigger I will
be a guide, like my father."
"A guide?"
"Yes, to lead travellers up to the mountain-tops. There is nowhere
you English will not go. The harder a mountain is to climb, the
more bent you are on going up. And oh, I shall love it too! There
are the great glaciers, the broad streams of ice that fill up the
furrows of the mountains, with the crevasses so blue and beautiful
and cruel. It was in one of them my father was swallowed up."
"Ah! then how can you love them?" said Lucy.
"Because they are so grand and so beautiful," said Maurice. "No
other place has the like, and they make one's heart swell with
wonder, and joy in the God who made them."
And Maurice's eyes sparkled, and Lucy looked at the clear, stern
glory of the mountain points, and felt as if she understood him.