"
"Each and every day was one to be marked by a white stone," he said,
with an earnestness hardly befitting railway-carriage conversation.
"The wet ones, too?" she asked, pleasantly.
"Wet or dry, what was the difference?" he made bold to say. "What did I
care about the rain if I could go down to the Aivron or away up to the
Geinig with you and old Robert?"
"You certainly were very brave about it," she said, in the most friendly
way; "you never once grumbled when the sandwiches got damp--not once."
And so the three of them kept gayly and carelessly talking and chatting
together, as the long train thundered away to the south; while ever and
anon they could turn their eyes to that changing phantasmagoria of the
outer world that went whirling by the windows. It was rather a
wild-looking day, sometimes brightening with a wan glare of sunlight,
but more often darkening until the country looked like a French
landscape, in its sombre tones of gray and black and green. Yet,
nevertheless, there was a sort of picturesqueness in the brooding sky,
the russet woods, the purple hedges, and the new-ploughed furrows; while
now and again a distant mansion, set on a height, shone a fair yellow
above its terraced lawn.
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