ails, and their wide-leaved swamp-dock clusters! It
had been used by the winds as a veritable dumping ground for obnoxious
weeds which grew and thrived on the marly clay while every other plant
despised it! Not that I mean to decry weeds--far be it from me. When the
goldenrod flings its velvet cushions along the edge of the copses, or
when the dandelion spangles the meadows, they are things of beauty
as well as any tulip or tiger-lily. But when they or their rivals,
silverweed, burdock, false ragweed, thistles, gumweed, and others usurp
the landscape and seem to choke up the very earth and the very air with
ceaseless monotony and repetition, then they become an offence to the
eye and a reproach to those who tolerate them. To-day, however, they all
lent their stalks to support the hoarfrost, to double and quadruple its
total mass. They were powdered over with countless diamonds.

It was here that I met with the flocks of snowflakes; and if my joyous
mood had admitted of any enhancement, they would have given it.

And never before had I seen the school and the cottage from quite so
far! The haze was still there, but somehow it seemed to be further
overhead now, with a stratum of winterclear air underneath. Once before,
when driving along the first east-west grade, where I discovered the
vista, I had wondered at the distance to which the eye could pierce.
Here, on the dam, of course, my vision was further aided by the fact
that whatever of trees and shrubs there was in the way--and a ridge of
poplars ran at right angles to the ditch, throwing up a leafy curtain in
summer--stood bare of its foliage. I was still nearly four miles from my
"home" when I first beheld it. And how pitiably lonesome it looked! Not
another house was to be seen in its neighbourhood. I touched the horses
up with my whip. I felt as if I should fly across the distance and bring
my presence to those in the cottage as their dearest gift. They knew I
was coming. They were at this very moment flying to meet me with their
thoughts. Was I well? Was I finding everything as I had wished to find
it? And though I often told them how I loved and enjoyed my drives,
they could not view them but with much anxiety, for they were waiting,
waiting, waiting... Waiting on Thursday for Friday to come, waiting on
Wednesday and Tuesday and Monday--waiting on Sunday even, as soon as I
had left; counting the days, and the hours, and the minutes, till I was
out, fighting storm