armed up here, to such an extent that she absolutely
flushed, and Susan, who had heretofore regarded her mistress merely as a
weakish woman, now set her down, mentally, as a barefaced story-teller.

"Surely, ma'am," she said, with diffidence, "ice and snow like that
doesn't fill _all_ the valleys, else we should see it, and find it
difficult to travel through 'em; shouldn't we, ma'am?"

"Silly girl!" exclaimed her preceptress, "I did not say it filled _all_
the valleys, but the _higher_ valleys--valleys such as, in England and
Scotland, would be clothed with pasturage and waving grain, and dotted
with cattle and sheep and smiling cottages."

Mrs Stoutley had by this time risen to a heroic frame, and spoke
poetically, which accounts for her ascribing risible powers to cottages.

"And thus you see, Susan," she continued, "Switzerland is, as it were, a
great ice-tank, or a series of ice-tanks, in which the ice of ages is
accumulated and saved up, so that the melting of a little of it--the
mere dribbling of it, so to speak--is sufficient to cause the continuous
flow of innumerable streams and of great rivers, such as the Rhone, and
the Rhine, and the Var."

The lecture received unexpected and appropriate illustration here by the
sudden lifting of the mists, which had hitherto blotted out the
landscape.

"Oh, aunt!" exclaimed Emma, running in at the moment, "just look at the
hills. How exquisite! How much grander than if we had seen them quite
clear from the first!"

Emma was strictly correct, for it is well known that the grandeur of
Alpine scenery is greatly enhanced by the wild and weird movements of
the gauze-like drapery with which it is almost always partially
enshrouded.

As the trio stood gazing in silent wonder and admiration from their
window, which, they had been informed, commanded a view of the summit of
Mont Blanc, the mist had risen like a curtain partially rolled up. All
above the curtain-foot presented the dismal grey, to which they had been
too long accustomed, but below, and, as it were, far behind this
curtain, the mountain-world was seen rising upwards.

So close were they to the foot of the Great White Monarch, that it
seemed to tower like a giant-wall before them; but this wall was varied
and beautiful as well as grand. Already the curtain had risen high
enough to disclose hoary cliffs and precipices, with steep grassy slopes
between, and crowned with fringes of dark pines; which latter,