Explore "A White Bird Flying" by Bess Streeter Aldrich on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
At dawn the birds outside Laura's window woke her. A woodpecker was beating a monotonous tom-tom on some hollow drum of a tree, and a rain-crow called. With returning consciousness, the thought that this was the last full day at home sprang nimbly to the foreground. For a time she lay and thought of many things: that Allen's personality had developed into something finer than mere attractiveness, --that life was like a forest in which one walked blindly, --that good judgment, like a forest ranger, watched for the earliest sign of smoke and flame--And then, suddenly, the simile weakened and had no meaning, for it occurred to her that the lookout can only give the alarm. By no means is he expected to reduce the conflagration, alone and single handed. There was something so disquieting about the thought that she rose, threw a robe across her shoulders, and sat by the window.
Some one was stirring. It was Aunt Grace, up early in order to get back to school on time. She felt a sudden tenderness for her, a definite pity that she had experienced a disappointment in life, all the more keen, perhaps, because it had been of her own making.