A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. by A. D. T. (Adeline Dutton Train) Whitney
page 75 of 224 (33%)
page 75 of 224 (33%)
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light for a looking-glass is such a disastrous thing!
"I've brushed out half my crimps," she said, again; "and my ruffle is basted in wrong side out, and altogether I'm got up _à la furieuse_!" But she laughed before she had done scolding, catching sight of her own exaggerated little frown in the distorting glass, that was unable, with all its malice, to spoil the bright young face when it came to smiles and dimples. And then Jeannie came knocking at the door. They had spare minutes, after all, and the mists were yet tossing in the valley when they went down. They were growing filmy, and floating away in shining fragments up over the shoulders of the hills, and the lake was lower and less, and the emerging green was like the "Thousand Islands." They waited a little there, in the wide, open door together, and looked out upon it; and then the Haddens went round into their sister's room, and Leslie was left alone in the rare, sweet, early air. The secret joy came whispering at her heart again: that there was all this in the world, and that one need not be utterly dull and mean, and dead to it; that something in her answered to the greatness overshadowing her; that it was possible, sometimes, and that people did reach out into a larger life than that of self and every-day. How else did the great mountains draw them to themselves so? But then she would not always be among the mountains. And so she stood, drinking in at her eyes all the shifting and melting splendors of the marvelous scene, with her thought busy, once more, in its own questioning. She remembered what she had said to Cousin Delight: "It is all outside. Going, and doing, and seeing, and hearing, |
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