The distant town, with its two church-spires, is choked and effaced in mist: the very sun is sickly and irresolute.

All Nature seems to say, "Have pity upon me--I die!" It is not often that our mother is in sympathy with her children.

Mostly when we cry she broadly laughs; when we laugh and are merry she weeps; but to-day my mood and hers match.

The tears are as near my eyes as hers--as near hers as mine.
"'See the leaves around us falling!'" say I, aloud, stretching out my right arm in dismal recitation.

We had the hymn last Sunday, which is what has put it into my head: "'See the leaves around us falling, Dry and withered to the ground--'" Another voice breaks in: "'Thus to thoughtless mortals calling--.'" "How you made me jump!" cry I, descending with an irritated leap to prose, and at least making the leaves say something entirely different from what they had ever been known to say before.
"Why did not you bring your sentinel, Vick ?" He--it is Musgrave, of course--has joined me, and is leaning his flat back also against the apostle, and, like me, is looking at the mist, at the red and yellow leaves--at the whole low-spirited panorama.
"She is ill," say I, lamentably, drawing a portrait in lamp-black and Indian-ink of the whole family; "we are _all_ ill--Barbara is ill!" "Poor Barbara!" "She has got a headache." "POOR Barbara!" "And I have got a heartache," say I, more for the sake of preserving the harmony of my sketch, and for making a pendant to Barbara, than because the phrase accurately describes my state.
"Poor _you_!" "_Poor me, indeed!_" cry I, with emphasis, and to this day I cannot make up my mind whether the ejaculation were good grammar or no.
"I have had _such_ bad news," I continue, feeling, as usual, a sensible relief from the communication of my grief.