Cuckoo was in the core of things, and the core of things is fierce and
hot and action-prompting. That half-revealed shadow waving good-bye to
Julian, as he stepped into the frosty night, was a shadow on fire. Yet he
had scarcely looked back at it. But Cuckoo was to learn to the last word
the lesson of patience. Inspired by the sympathy of the doctor and by
something deep in her own heart, she was, for the moment, all courage,
all flame. She was ready to fight. She was ready to do supreme things,
to touch the stars. The stars went out and she had not touched them. The
morning dawned very chilly, very dark, the morning that brought Mrs.
Brigg to her room yellow and complaining. Still, Cuckoo was conscious
of a high, beating courage that made summer in that winter day. She
astonished the old keeper of that weary house by the vivacity of her
manner, the brightness of her look. For Mrs. Brigg was well accustomed
to sad morning moods, to petulant lassitude, and dull grimness of
unpainted and unpowdered fatigue, but had long been a stranger to early
moods of hope or of gaiety. Mornings in houses such as hers are recurring
tragedies, desolating pulses of Time, shaking human hearts with each beat
nearer and nearer to the ultimatum of sorrow.
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