Spring had come again, and its eternal spirit spread the message of
new-born hope, stirred the sap of awakening life, warmed the bosom
of a wintry earth and put into the hearts of birds the old desire to
mate. But the lonely girl turned a deaf ear to the call, and rounded
her shoulders over the elderly desk with tears blistering her
letter.

"I'm miserable, miserable," she wrote. "There doesn't seem to be
anything to live for. I suppose it's selfish and horrid to grumble
because Mother has married again, but why did she choose the very
moment when she was to take me into life? Oh, Alice, what am I to
do? I feel like a rabbit with its foot in a trap, listening to the
traffic on the main road--like a newly fledged bird brought down
with a broken wing among the dead leaves of Rip Van Winkle's
sleeping-place. You'll laugh when you read this, and say that I'm
dramatizing my feelings and writing for effect; but if you've got
any heart at all, you'd cry if you saw me (me of all girls!) buried
alive out here without a single soul to speak to who's as young as I
am--hushed if I laugh by mistake, scowled at if I let myself move
quickly, catching old age every hour I stay here."

"Why, Alice, just think of it! There's not a person or a thing in
and out of this house that's not old. I don't mean old as we thought
of it at school, thirty and thirty-five, but really and awfully old.
The house is the oldest for miles round. My grandfather is seventy-
two, and my grandmother's seventy. The servants are old, the trees
are old, the horses are old; and even the dogs lie about with dim
eyes waiting for death."