A White Heron — Vocabulary
Sarah Orne Jewett
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...and vexed by their fluttering and lawlessness the solemn heron goes away.1 more

She had always believed that whoever climbed to the top of it could see the ocean; and the little girl had often laid her hand on the great rough trunk and looked up wistfully at those dark boughs that the wind always stirred, no matter how hot and still the air might be below.1 more

But the stately head of this old pine towered above them all and made a landmark for sea and shore miles and miles away.1 more

...she knew by instinct that her grandmother did not comprehend the gravity of the situation.

The old cow was not inclined to wander farther, she even turned in the right direction for once as they left the pasture, and stepped along the road at a good pace.

But Sylvia kept an awed silence; she knew by instinct that her grandmother did not comprehend the gravity of the situation.

Though this chase had been so long that the wary animal herself had given an unusual signal of her whereabouts, Sylvia had only laughed when she came upon Mistress Moolly at the swamp-side, and urged her affectionately homeward with a twig of birch leaves.†

The short summer night seemed as long as the winter darkness, and at last when the whippoorwills ceased, and she was afraid the morning would after all come too soon, she stole out of the house and followed the pasture path through the woods,

She knows his secret now, the wild, light, slender bird that floats and wavers, and goes back like an arrow presently to his home in the green world beneath.

Perhaps it was only migrating, or had been chased out of its own region by some bird of prey.

She thought often with wistful compassion of a wretched geranium that belonged to a town neighbor.

At last the sun came up bewilderingly bright.†

Then Sylvia, well satisfied, makes her perilous way down again, not daring to look far below the branch she stands on, ready to cry sometimes because her fingers ache and her lamed feet slip.†

A little girl was driving home her cow, a plodding, dilatory, provoking creature in her behavior, but a valued companion for all that.

"So Sylvy knows all about birds, does she?" he exclaimed, as he looked round at the little girl who sat, very demure but increasingly sleepy, in the moonlight.

...a company of shouting cat-birds comes also to the tree, and vexed by their fluttering and lawlessness the solemn heron goes away.

It was like a great main-mast to the voyaging earth; it must truly have been amazed that morning through all its ponderous frame as it felt this determined spark of human spirit wending its way from higher branch to branch.

Some premonition of that great power stirred and swayed these young creatures who traversed the solemn woodlands with soft-footed silent care.

Mrs. Tilley gave amazed attention to all this, but Sylvia still watched the toad, not divining, as she might have done at some calmer time, that the creature wished to get to its hole under the door-step, and was much hindered by the unusual spectators at that hour of the evening.

The young man had known the horrors of its most primitive housekeeping, and the dreary squalor of that level of society which does not rebel at the companionship of hens.