A White Bird Flying by Bess Streeter Aldrich

It was not quite five-thirty when Laura went down to Kathie's. She was fresh and dainty in creamy white, an ensemble in which she was at her best, for the pale olive of her skin, her shining brown eyes and soft brown hair were thrown into lovely relief by the very lack of coloring in the costume. As she walked, her thoughts skipped about, quite like children at play, with no special objective. She thought of the physical ease that life would bring her at Uncle Harry's and of the long free hours in which she could scribble to her heart's content. She thought of her youth, and how true it was that a young person's eyes were always on the future. That made her think of old Oscar Lutz in contrast, whose thoughts were always with the days that were gone. Age and youth! Her father, then, must be at the stage where one thought only of the day's work,--the present. She would not like that age very well, she decided,--the time when one looked neither hopefully forward nor longingly back.

She thought how pretty Kathie's house looked down the street, in its trim lawn with the white hydrangeas massed against the reddish- brown of the brick. Allen had said it was the kind of house he wanted to build--At that, she concentrated on the vision of Uncle Harry, and was annoyed that she could think of him only in his most exasperating moments of see-sawing nervously up and down.