Snow-Blind

contemplated her. "What do you see when you look into the water-bucket, Bella?"

"The water-bucket?" She flushed. "Just because you caught me prinking that once!"

"Well, if you had a mirror, what would you see in it, then?"

"An ugly old woman, Pete."

"There! Your mind's just the wrong-side-out of Hugh's. He won't see himself ugly, and you won't see yourself pretty. I'm the only sane fellow in this house."

"And you never in your life saw a pretty woman to remember her. Besides, you're too young." She said it with a tart sweetness and vanished into the kitchen.

With her departure Pete's whittling ceased, his hands fell slack and he began to stare out through the snow-walled window. His anxiety for Hugh slipped imperceptibly into a vague pondering over his own youthfulness. That's what those two were always telling him, sometimes savagely, sometimes tenderly! "You're too young." What did it mean to him, anyhow, that he was "too young"? A desolation from which at times he suffered in secret overc