SUMMER.
CHAPTER I.
Cordelia.—So young, my lord, and true."
I am eighteen years old. It sounds a good deal, does it not? It seems only yesterday that I was quite little, scrambling about in short frocks and leaving bits of the same on every railing, hedge, and gate the place contains: now I am in "tails," real downright tails; limited, it is true, as to length and width, but still tails which come in useful when I want to snub Dorley or the boys; but on the other hand, hamper me sadly when some forlorn remnant of my active youth prompts me to scale the trees, or go bird's nesting. On the whole I am sorry to have reached that broad flat table-land of grown-upness that is so easy to ascend, but can be stepped down from never again. If one's young days might only be pushed farther, if we might be given thirty years of growing instead of sixteen, surely the forty beyond, that are allotted as the period of man's existence, would be enough for us to be grown-up, and steady, and sad in? I hate to part with my merry insouciant young years. I dread to let them go, and feel the old tastes and loves slipping away from me, and the new fancies and pursuits taking their place. I am sorry that I shall never grow any more—never measure my back against the school-room wall to see if my head is any nearer the notch that marks Jack's height—never look anxiously in the glass to see if time brings me less ugliness
