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Book, page 31 / 42 As she sat up in the grass and looked about her, a bark startled her. A dog began to growl, bark, and dance round her, so that she would have been much frightened if the next moment a voice had not called him off--"Fie, Brilliant, down; let the little girl alone. He is good, Madamoiselle, never fear. He helps me keep the cows." "Who are you, then?" "I am Maurice, the little herd-boy. I live with my grandmother, and work for her." "What, in keeping cows?" "Yes; and look here!" "Oh, the delicious little cottage! It has eaves and windows, and balconies, and a door, and little cows and sheep, and men and women, all in pretty white wood! You did not make it, Maurice?" "Yes, truly I did; I cut it out with my knife, all myself." "How clever you must be. And what shall you do with it?" "I shall watch for a carriage with ladies winding up that long road; and then I shall stand and take off my hat, and hold out my cottage. Perhaps they will buy it, and then I shall have enough to get grandmother a warm gown for the winter. When I grow bigger I will be a guide, like my father." "A guide?" "Yes, to lead travellers up to the mountain-tops. There is nowhere you English will not go. The harder a mountain is to climb, the more bent you are on going up. And oh, I shall love it too! There are the great glaciers, the broad streams of ice that fill up the furrows of the mountains, with the crevasses so blue and beautiful and cruel. It was in one of them my father was swallowed up." "Ah! then how can you love them?" said Lucy.
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