Читать книгу The Passionate Quest онлайн

2 страница из 87

"At last!" the girl murmured, taking off her hat and carrying it. "What a week!"

"Hellish!" the tall, thin boy walking by her side agreed.

"Like all the others," the most ordinary-looking of the three—a broad-shouldered, square-faced youth who brought up the rear—muttered.

Their efforts at conversation seemed temporarily expended—or perhaps the exertion of climbing the last hundred yards of the hill kept them a little breathless. The girl, as they drew nearer the stretch of wood towards which they were bound, moved her head from side to side as though asking for the caress of the west wind, which came to them now with a sweeter and fresher quality. Her companion paused to tear a little cluster of wild roses from the hedge. The girl accepted them, looked into the petals for a moment and then flung them to the ground.

"Smuts!" she exclaimed. "Even the flowers are blackened! One can't escape, even here, from the filth of that hateful town."

The young man looked down regretfully at the blossom which her foot had crushed.