Edith Wharton

Summer Edith Wharton

A girl came out of lawyer Royall's house, at the end of the one street of North Dormer, and stoodon the doorstep. It was the beginning of a June afternoon. The springlike transparent sky shed a rain of silversunshine on the roofs of the village, and on the pastures and larchwoods surrounding it. A littlewind moved among the round white clouds on the shoulders of the hills, driving their shadowsacross the fields and down the grassy road that takes the name of street when it passes throughNorth Dormer. The place lies high and in the open, and lacks the lavish shade of the more protectedNew England villages. The clump of weeping-willows about the duck pond, and the Norwayspruces in front of the Hatchard gate, cast almost the only roadside shadow between lawyer Royall'shouse and the point where, at the other end of the village, the road rises above the church and skirtsthe black hemlock wall enclosing the cemetery. The little June wind, frisking down the street, shook the doleful fringes of the Hatchard spruces, caught the straw hat of a young man just passing under them, and spun it clean across the road intothe duck-pond. As he ran to fish it out the girl on lawyer Royall's doorstep noticed that he was a stranger, that hewore city clothes, and that he was laughing with all his teeth, as the young and careless laugh at suchmishaps. Her heart contracted a little, and the shrinking that sometimes came over her when she sawpeople with holiday faces made her draw back into the house and pretend to look for the key thatshe knew she had already put into her pocket. A narrow greenish mirror with a gilt eagle over ithung on the passage wall, and she looked critically at her reflection, wished for the thousandth timethat she had blue eyes like Annabel Balch, the girl who sometimes came from Springfield to spend aweek with old Miss Hatchard, straightened the sunburnt hat over her small swarthy face, and turnedout again into the sunshine."How I hate everything!" she murmured