The sunny serenity of her happy home was disturbed by a multitude of new elements, for an atmosphere of constant expectation gave a restless tone to its usual placid routine.

And through all and below all, there was that feeling of money perplexity, which, where it exists, is no more to be hid than the subtle odor of musk, present though unseen.
This year the white winter appeared to Charlotte interminable in length.
The days in which it was impossible to go out, full of Sophia's sewing and little worries and ostentations; the windy, tempestuous nights, that swept the gathering drifts away; the cloudless moonlight nights, full of that awful, breathless quiet that broods in land-locked dales,--all of them, and all of Nature's moods, had become inexpressibly, monotonously wearisome before the change came.

But one morning at the end of March, there was a great west wind charged with heavy rains, and in a few hours the snow on all the fells had been turned into rushing floods, that came roaring down from every side into the valley.
"'Oh, wind! If winter comes, can spring be far behind ?'" quoted Charlotte, as she stood watching the white cascades.
"It will be cuckoo time directly my dear; and the lambs will be bleating on the fells, and the yellow primroses blowing under all the hedges.

I want to see the swallows take the storm on their wings badly this year.
Eh?
What, Charlotte ?" "So do I, father.

I never was so tired of the house before." "There's a bit of a difference lately, I think.