Read "Dangerous Ages" by Rose Macaulay online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
They all sat round the tea-table, and most of them were warm and sleepy from Sunday afternoon by the fire, but Barry and Gerda were warm and tingling from walking in the storm. Some people prefer one sensation, some the other.
Neville thought "How pretty Gerda looks, pink like that. " She was glad to know that she too looked pretty, in her blue afternoon dress. It was good, in that charming room, that they should all look agreeable to the eye. Even Mrs. Hilary, with her nervous, faded grace, marred by self-consciousness and emotion. And Grandmama, smiling and shrewd, with her old indrawn lips; and Rodney, long and lounging and clever; Jim, square-set, sensible, clean-cut, beautiful to his mother and to his women patients, good for everyone to look at; Barry, brown and charming, with his quick smile; the boy Kay, with his pale, rounded, oval face, his violet eyes like his mother's, only shortsighted, so that he had a trick of screwing them up and peering, and a mouth that widened into a happy sweetness when he smiled.