"It was late afternoon and the April sunshine brimmed the woods and fell in quivering, dancing drops on the dead leaves of last year. The smooth beeches held up their glass-clear leaves to the sun, and the light strained through them like water through a sieve. Pools of rain lay on the earth in black hollows under the trees and thick carpets of moss covered the naked roots. By the walls and in the wood field young bracken raised its thousand curled fists, and the rough-haired stirks nosed among it seeking the bitter-sweet grasses. Sheltering under the fox-coloured fernballs grew primroses, and the striped cups of wood-sorrel. The sweet warm breath of spring was mingled with the odours of winter, but already the spikes of bluebells had pierced the earth and the pale green buds showed in the rosettes of stiff leaves."
"She looked round the whitewashed attic with its green-painted wooden bed, shaped like a house gable, and the tumbled sheets and blankets. The summer patchwork quilt, made of pieces of print frocks flecked with little flowers and spots and stars, lay in a crumpled pile, tossed over the bottom gable. There was an old carved chest, unpolished and rough oak, with iron lock and heavy hinges, under the low dipping eaves. Susan glanced at it with distain for its lack of beeswax. It was scrubbed like the attic floorboards, and the wooden pegs for clothes. Upon it was set of doll's house furniture, with chairs and tables made of horse-chestnut and cradles of rushes, and screens of Christmas cards. The penny dolls dressed in scraps of silk and velvet reclined in various attitudes on the tiny chestnut couch and the frilled bed, but Susan had lost interest in them. She had outgrown their attractions, and they were now museum pieces, if Susan had known anything about museums. She arranged them, and added to them a delicate shell, a feather, or a cherry-stone basket, but they were no longer toys for her delight."
Sent from England; hard to find.
A Favorite Book
England
