but the
Chauffeulier showed no desire to stop and let them admire our "bonnet"
at close quarters.

The excitement of the drive, and my conviction that Mr. Barrymore was
silently fighting some unseen danger for us all, filled me with a kind
of intoxication. I could have screamed; but if I had, it wouldn't have
been with cowardly fear. Partly, perhaps, the strange exhilaration came
from the beauty of the world on which we were descending almost as if we
were falling from the sky. I felt that I could have lovely thoughts
about it--almost as poetical as Maida's--if only I had had time; but as
it was, the ideas jostled each other in my mind like a crowd of people
rushing to catch a train.

From behind, I could hear Maida's voice from moment to moment, as she
talked to Mamma or Sir Ralph, innocently unsuspicious of any hidden
danger.

"Isn't it all wonderful?" she was saying. "Day before yesterday we left
riotous, tumultuous summer on the Riviera; found autumn in the Roya
valley, chill and grim, though so magnificent; and came into winter
snows this morning. Now we've dropped down into spring. It's like a
fairy story I read once, about a girl whose cruel stepmother drove her
from home penniless, and sent her into the mountains at dead of night,
telling her never to come back unless she could bring an apronful of
strawberries for her stepsister. The poor girl wandered on and on in the
dark in a terrible storm, until at last she strayed to a wild
mountain-top, where the twelve Months lived. Some were old men, wrapped
in long cloaks; some were young and ardent; some were laughing boys.
With a stroke of his staff, each Month could make what he would with the
weather. Father January had but to wave his stick to cause the snow to
fall; May, in pity for the girl's tears, created a rose garden, while
his brother's snow-wreaths were melting; but it was June who finally
understood what she wanted, and gave her a bed of fragrant strawberries.
I feel as if _we_ had wandered to the house of the Months, and they were
waving their staffs to create miracles for us."

"It will be a miracle if we ever get out of the house of the Months and
into one of our own," I said to myself, almost spitefully, for the talk
in the tonneau did seem frivolous when I glanced up furtively at that
tight-set mouth of Mr. Barrymore's. And after that, to look down from a
frame of snow mountains through a pinky-white haze of plum, cherry, and
pear blossoms to