In our village at home, all the houses are low and broad and comfortable-looking.

They look as if they had sat down and leaned back to take their ease; and they are all neat and clean-looking, and have rows of flower-beds from the gate to the front door.

I never saw a house built with such a steep angle to its roof as this has," said Mercy, looking up with the instinctive dislike of a natural artist's eye at the ridgepole of the old house.
"We have to have our roofs at a sharp pitch, to let the snow slide off in winter," said Stephen, apologetically, "we have such heavy snows here; but that doesn't make the angle any less ugly to look at." "No," said Mercy; and her eyes still roved up and down and over the house, with not a shadow of relenting in their expression.

It was Stephen's turn to be silent now.

He watched her, but did not speak.
Mercy's face was not merely a record of her thoughts: it was a photograph of them.