and admire it," or, sitting down abruptly on a fallen log. "Oh, see those pines! See that glorious stretch of snow!" she'd exclaim.
As time went on, she welcomed a loose strap on her snow-shoe, or even the barbed wire fences catching on her plaid skirt, as a chance for a moment's plausible delay. What to the others was a little mosey in the woods was to Edna the supreme physical exertion of her life. After the first half hour, the morning's stroll became an interminable series of jerks and stops—a dozen steps forward, and then a moment of standing still, when her heart, which seemed to be located somewhere in the region of her throat, made a noise in her head that was like an enormous sledge-hammer pounding on something soft like flesh—her flesh; when, to fill her lungs, she had to fight as if she were drawing in the air through several thicknesses of finely woven cloth, and the throbbing, and the choking, and the aching, all together, blinded and staggered her.
But she wouldn't give up. She had heard that a man got his second wind after a while. No doubt she'd get hers, if she'd just hold on. And she did hold on—quarter-hour after quarter-hour, conquering interminable ascents, accomplishing countless athletic feats down snowy slides, along edges of rocky precipices (she dreamed of
