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Elizabeth Enright

Elizabeth Enright Books

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Gone-Away Lake

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Thimble Summer

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“Gradually people began to speak of the place as Amberside, though there were a few diehards who never stopped calling it Villa Caprice, or, as in the case of Eli Scaynes, the Villa Cay-priss. But Julian and Joe and Tom and Lucy and Davey never called it anything but "the Blake's house"; and Portia and Foster never called it anything but "home." All their lives they knew that one of the best things that ever happened to them was to be able to call it that.”

“Garnet was very happy. She was so happy, for no especial reason, that she felt as if she must move carefully so she wouldn’t jar or shake the feeling of happiness. She descended from the roof cautiously, and walked with even steps down through the vegetable garden and across the pasture to the slough. A green light, tranquil and diffused, glowed among the willow saplings. The water was clear and motionless. Garnet leaned against a tree. She was so quiet that a great blue heron, fancying itself alone, flew down between the branches and paused at the water’s edge. She watched the handsome creature, with his blue crest and slender long legs, wading and darting his bill into the water. She was so near that she could see the jewel color of his little eye. He stood for a contemplative moment on one foot, still as a bird of carven stone; and in that moment it seemed to Garnet that he had become her companion; a creature who understood and shared her mood of happiness. For a second or two they stood like that in perfect stillness: and then the heron spread his heavy wings and flew away.”

“The summer,' Randy explained. 'I'm going to appreciate it. I'm going to walk in the woods noticing everything, and ride my bike on all the roads I never explored. I'm going to fill a pillow with ladies' tobacco so I can smell it in January and remember about August. I'm going to dry a big bunch of pennyroyal so I can break pieces off all winter and think of summer. I'm going to look at everything, and smell everything, and listen to everything so I'll never forget --”

“It was still raw and cold, but every now and then there would be a day, or an hour, or a moment, when the sun came out, and there was something different in the air: a sort of glimpsed fragrance, like when the kitchen door is opened for a second while the birthday cake is being baked. It was a smell of promise. The little brook bellowed hoarsely; there was a swelling at the joints of the twigs, and the first skunk cabbages appeared, brown cowls beside the brook. And at night, tinkling, jingling, gurgling, with high silvery notes, came the voices of the peepers. The dark was spangled with their voices.”

“In the deep sky where there had been a sun, we saw a ring of white silver; a smoking ring, and all the smokes were silver, too; gauzy, fuming, curling, unbelievable. And who had ever seen the sky this color! Not in the earliest morning or at twilight, never before had we seen or dreamed this strange immortal blue in which a few large stars now sparkled as though for the first time in creation.”

“Grownups! Everyone remembers them. How strange and even sad it is that we never became what they were: beings noble, infallible, and free. We never became them. One of the things we discover as we live is that we never become anything different from what we are. We are no less ourselves at forty than we were at four, and because of this we know grownups as Grownups only once in life: during our own childhood. We never meet them in our lives again, and we will miss them always.”