isy and slower-footed thought
Can overtake the rapture of the sense.

"I was fifteen and a half last spring, and now, though it is only a year
ago, everything is different!" she mused. "When did it get to be
different, I wonder? It never was all at once, so it must have been a
little every day, so little that I hardly noticed it until just now."

A young girl's heart is ever yearning for and trembling at the future.
In its innocent depths the things that are to be are sometimes rustling
and whispering secrets, and sometimes keeping an exquisite, haunting
silence. In the midst of the mystery the solemn young creature is
sighing to herself, "What am I meant for? Am I everything? Am I nothing?
Must I wait till my future comes to me, or must I seek it?"

This was all like the sound of a still, small voice in Nancy's mind, but
it meant that she was "growing up," taking hold on life at more points
than before, seeing new visions, dreaming new dreams. Kathleen and Julia
seemed ridiculously young to her. She longed to advise them, but her
sense of humor luckily kept her silent. Gilbert appeared crude, raw;
promising, but undeveloped; she hated to think how much experience he
would have to pass through before he could see existence as it really
was, and as she herself saw it. Olive's older view of things, her sad,
strange outlook upon life, her dislike of anything in the shape of man,
her melancholy aversion to her father, all this fascinated and puzzled
Nancy, whose impetuous nature ran out to every living thing, revelling
in the very act of loving, so long as she did not meet rebuff.

Cyril perplexed her. Silent, unresponsive, shy, she would sometimes
raise her eyes from her book in school and find him gazing steadily at
her like a timid deer drinking thirstily at a spring. Nancy did not like
Cyril, but she pitied him and was as friendly with him, in her offhand,
boyish fashion, as she was with every one.

The last days of the academy term were close at hand, and the air was
full of graduation exercises and white muslin and ribbon sashes. June
brought two surprises to the Yellow House. One morning Kathleen burst
into Nancy's room with the news: "Nancy! The Fergusons offer to adopt
Judy, and she doesn't want to go. Think of that! But she's afraid to ask
mother if she can stay. Let's us do it; shall we?"

"I will; but of course there is not enough money to go around, Kitty,
even if we all succeed in our vacation plans. Ju