SUMMER
by Edith Wharton
1917
I
A girl came out of lawyer Royall's house, at the end of
the one street of North Dormer, and stood on the
doorstep.
It was the beginning of a June afternoon. The
springlike transparent sky shed a rain of silver
sunshine on the roofs of the village, and on the
pastures and larchwoods surrounding it. A little wind
moved among the round white clouds on the shoulders of
the hills, driving their shadows across the fields and
down the grassy road that takes the name of street when
it passes through North Dormer. The place lies high
and in the open, and lacks the lavish shade of the more
protected New England villages. The clump of weeping-
willows about the duck pond, and the Norway spruces in
front of the Hatchard gate, cast almost the only
roadside shadow between lawyer Royall's house and the
|
