Explore "Olive" by Dinah Mulock on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In one of the western environs of London is a region which, lying between two great omnibus outlets, is yet as retired and old-fashioned as though it had been miles and miles distant from the metropolis. Fields there are few or none, certainly; but there are quiet, green lanes (where in springtime you may pluck many a fragrant hawthorn branch), and market-gardens, and grand old trees; while on summer mornings you may continually hear a loud chorus of birds -- especially larks -- though these latter "blithe spirits" seem to live perpetually in the air, and one marvels how they ever contrive to make their nests in the potato-grounds below. Perhaps they do so in emulation of their human neighbours -- authors, actors, artists, who in this place "most do congregate," many of them, poor souls! singing their daily songs of life out in the world, as the larks in the air; none knowing what a mean, lowly, sometimes even desolate home, is the nest whence such music springs.
Well, in this region, there is a lane * (a crooked, unpaved, winding, quaint, dear old lane! ); and in that lane there is a house; and in that house there are two especially odd rooms, where dwelt Olive Rothesay and her mother.