Explore "Olive" by Dinah Mulock on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was a Sunday afternoon, not bright, but dull. All the long day the low clouds had been dropping freshness down; -- the soft May-rain, which falls warm and silent, as if the spring were weeping itself away for very gladness. Through the open window came the faint odour which the earth gives forth during rain -- an odour of bursting leaves and dew-covered flowers. On the lawn you could almost "have seen the grass grow. " And though the sky was dull and grey, still the whole air was so full of summer, so rich in the promise of what the next day would be, that you did not marvel to hear the birds singing as merrily as if it had been sunshine. There was one thrush to which Olive had stood listening for half-an-hour. He sat sheltered in the heart of the great syringa bush. Though the rain kept dropping continually from its flowers, he poured out a song so long and merry, that he even disturbed his friends in the parlour -- the happy silent three -- mother, son, and the son's betrothed.
Mrs. Gwynne, who sat in the far corner, put down her book -- the best Book, for Sunday and all other days -- the only one she ever read now. Harold, still feeble, lying back in his armchair by the window, listened to the happy bird.