Dangerous ages [antikvár]

CHAPTER I Neville's birthday i Neville, at five o'clock (nature's time, not man's) on the morning of her birthday, woke írom the dream-broken sleep of summer dawns, hot with the burden of two sheets and a blanket, roused by the multitudinous silver calling of a world full of birds. They chattered and bickered about the creepered house, shrill and sweet, like a hundred brooks running together down steep rocky places after snow. And, not like brooks, and strangely unlike birds, like, in fact, nothing in the world except a cuckoo clock, a cuckoo shouted foolishly in the lowest boughs of the great elm across the silver lawn. Neville turned on her face, cupped her small, pale, tanned face in her sunburnt hands, and looked out with sleepy violet eyes. The sharp joy of the young day struck into her as she breathed it through the wide window. She shivered ecstatically as it blew coldly on to her bare throat and chest, and forgot the restless birthday bitterness of the night— forgot how she had lain and thought, " Another year gone, and nothing done yet. Soon all the years will be gone, and nothing ever will be done." Done by her, she of course meant, as all who are 7