Webb, Mary Gladys Meredith, 1881-1927 / 2008-05-16 00:00:00

EBOOK GONE TO EARTH ***


This eBook was produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


GONE TO EARTH


by Mary Webb
1917


[Dedication]
_To him whose presence is home._


Chapter 1

Small feckless clouds were hurried across the vast untroubled
sky--shepherdless, futile, imponderable--and were torn to fragments
on the fangs of the mountains, so ending their ephemeral adventures
with nothing of their fugitive existence left but a few tears.
It was cold in the Callow--a spinney of silver birches and larches that
topped a round hill. A purple mist hinted of buds in the tree-tops, and
a fainter purple haunted the vistas between the silver and brown boles.
Only the crudeness of youth was here as yet, and not its triumph--only
the sharp calyx-point, the pricking tip of the bud, like spears, and
not the paten of the leaf, the chalice of the flower.
For as yet spring had no flight, no song, but went like a half-fledged
bird, hopping tentatively through the undergrowth. The bright springing
mercury that carpeted the open spaces had only just hung out its pale
flowers, and honeysuckle leaves were still tongues of green fire.
Read more


Parts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20