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She arose listlessly and walked toward the window, which opened out upon the wide, cool, rose-embowered porch. The sunshine glimmered on her amber satin robe, and the white frost-work of lace at her throat, and upon the dark, rich beauty of her southern face. "Miss Pluma," called Mrs. Corliss, the housekeeper, entering the room, "there is a person down-stairs who wishes to see you.
"This is our place for working out designs for those who are unskilled in frost-work. Frostwork is something too delicate for human hands, but in it we excel. Have you never seen on your window-pane of a cold winter morning the picture of a forest of pines, or sheets of sparkling stars and crystals? I am sure you have.
Nor will I rest the defence of my position upon the fact that it can never be unsafe to obey the commands of God. These are the old and common arguments of "fanatics" and "enthusiasts," melting away like frost-work in the glorious sunshine of expediency and utility. In the light of these modern luminaries, then, let us reason together.
The mountain-tops, however, surpassed all other objects in the transfigured world, for upon them a heavy mist had rested and frozen, clothing every branch and spray with a feathery frost-work of crystals, which, in the sun-lighted distance, was like a great shock of silver hair. There were drawbacks, however, to this marvellous scene.
In the nearer foreground, along the lines of the wharves and docks, a wilderness of masts and spars of a tone just darker than the gray of the mist stood away from the blur of the background with the distinctness and delicacy of frost-work. But amid all this grayness of sky and water and fog one distinguished certain black and shifting masses.
The frost-work had so covered the windowpanes that it was hardly possible to get a glimpse at the scenery outside.
Nobody had called me; I knew that, now, yet I had an uneasy impression that someone wanted me somewhere, and that something was wrong. It was stupid to let this worry me, I told myself, however; and having lingered a few moments at the window studying the lovely pattern of frost-work lace on the glass, and the fringe of priceless pearls on branch of bush, and stunted tree, I went back to bed.
Here, among and beyond the rocks, were oaks, and pines, and savins each needle-like leaf a shimmering lance each clustering branch a spray of gems and the stout, spreading limbs of the oaks delineating themselves against the sky above in Gothic frost-work. Suddenly before they thought it could be so near they came up and out into a broader opening.
Yet it is conspicuously noticeable that those caves showing the most delicately fragile and wonderfully varied forms of decoration are those traversed by the most sweeping and changeable, or even reversible, currents of air; which might lead to the conclusion that the moisture is sprayed or converted into a light, misty vapor, and then deposited in exactly the same manner as the beautiful frost-work at Niagara: the direction and force of the current determining the location of the frail deposits.
The boy, after scratching a peep-hole through the frost-work on his window, and taking a last survey through it of the snow-covered fields he was leaving, produced a large blue-spotted handkerchief from the pocket of his trousers, and retired with it into the privacy of his own feelings.
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