CHAPTER I

NEVILLE'S BIRTHDAY


1

Neville, at five o'clock (Nature's time, not man's) on the morning of her
birthday, woke from 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 onto 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 familiar with birthdays will
know. But what was something and what was nothing, neither she nor others
with birthdays could satisfactorily define. They have lived, they have
eaten, drunk, loved, bathed, suffered, talked, danced in the night and
rejoiced in the dawn, warmed, in fact, both hands before the fire of