Edith Wharton

Summer Edith Wharton

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 ofsilver sunshine on the roofs of the village, and on the pastures and larchwoods surroundingit. A little wind moved among the round white clouds on the shoulders of the hills, drivingtheir shadows across the fields and down the grassy road that takes the name of streetwhen it passes through North Dormer. The place lies high and in the open, and lacks thelavish shade of the more protected New England villages. The clump of weeping-willowsabout the duck pond, and the Norway spruces in front of the Hatchard gate, cast almost theonly roadside shadow between lawyer Royall's house and the point where, at the other endof the village, the road rises above the church and skirts the black hemlock wall enclosingthe cemetery. The little June wind, frisking down the street, shook the doleful fringes of the Hatchardspruces, caught the straw hat of a young man just passing under them, and spun it cleanacross the road into the duck-pond. As he ran to fish it out the girl on lawyer Royall's doorstep noticed that he was a stranger, that he wore city clothes, and that he was laughing with all his teeth, as the young andcareless laugh at such mishap