Page:Hollyhock house; a story for girls (IA hollyhockhousest00tagg).pdf/113



Mary Garden woke with a start the next morning. Her room was filled with the beautiful light that preceded the sun on a mid-June morning, when the days are longest. She could not recall for a bewildered instant what it was that made her feel such a sense of great possession, such flooding joy. Then the chorussing birds in the garden below aroused her more fully, and she knew!

“The first day!” she thought, sinking back into the pillows, and into the birdsong and translucent air, feeling that all beauty flowed around her and held her up, that she lay on great joy-filled hands which at once gave to her and sustained her.

It was not yet four o’clock, so Mary gave herself up for a delicious half-hour to turning over the wealth that had come to her; she felt as one might whose hands were dripping with unset