He had not entirely given up on the possibility of a skiable line somewhere up from the pass. This would stop Neal from joking that he was taking his skis for a walk around the Himalaya.
He gazed in through the glass door, smiled at the box containing the citron, until his mother saw him, and said to his father that the young scamp wanted to get hold of the citron to bite off its top.
Then a change began slowly to declare itself. The horizon became clearer, field and tree came more into sight, and somehow with a different look; the mystery began to drop away from them.