They had come to regard
it as an elderly animal asleep, for its chimneys looked like horns, it
possessed a capacious mouth that both swallowed and disgorged, and its
eyes were as numerous as those of the forest to which they themselves
properly belonged. And so they accepted the old Mill House as a thing
of drowsy but persistent life; they protected and caressed it; they
liked it exactly where it was; and if it moved they would have known
an undeniable shock.
They watched it now, this dark December evening, as one by one its
gleaming eyes shone bright and yellow through the mist, then one by
one let down their dark green lids. "It's going to sleep," they
thought. "It's going to dream. Its life, like ours, is all inside. It
sleeps the winter through as we do. All is well. Good-night, old house
of grey! We'll also go to sleep."
Unable to see into the brain of the sleepy monster, the trees resigned
themselves to dream again, tucking the earth closely against their
roots and withdrawing into the cloak of misty darkness. Like most
other things in winter they also stayed indoors, leading an interior
life of dim magnificence behind their warm, thick bark.
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