Explore "Olive" by Dinah Mulock on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Olive Rothesay was twelve years old, and she had never learnt the meaning of that word whose very sound seems a wail -- sorrow. And that other word, which is the dirge of the whole earth -- death -- was still to her only a name. She knew there was such a thing; she read of it in her books; its shadow had passed her by when she missed her little brother from the cradle; but still it had never stood by her side and said, "Lo, I am here! " Her circle of love was so small that it seemed as though the dread spectre could not enter. She saw it afar off; she thought upon it sometimes in her poetical dreams, which clad the imaginary shape of grief with a strange beauty. It was sweet to be sad, sweet to weep.
She even tried to make a few delicious sorrows for herself; and when a young girl -- whose beautiful face she had watched in church -- died, she felt pensive and mournful, and even took a pleasure in thinking that there was now one grave in the new churchyard which she would almost claim to weep over.