the restless birthday bitterness of the night; forgot
how she had lain and thought "Another year gone, and nothing done yet.
Soon all the years will be gone, and nothing ever will be done." Done by
her, she, of course, meant, as all who are familiar with birthdays will
know. But what was something and what was nothing, neither she nor others
with birthdays could satisfactorily define. They have lived, they have
eaten, drunk, loved, bathed, suffered, talked, danced in the night and
rejoiced in the dawn, warmed, in fact, both hands before the fire of
life, but still they are not ready to depart. For they are behindhand
with time, obsessed with so many worlds, so much to do, the petty done,
the undone vast. It depressed Milton when he turned twenty-three; it
depresses all those with vain and ambitious temperaments at least once a
year. Some call it remorse for wasted days, and are proud of it; others
call it vanity, discontent or greed, and are ashamed of it. It makes no
difference either way.

Neville, flinging it off lightly with her bedclothes, sprang out of bed,
thrust her brown feet into sand shoes, her slight, straight, pyjama-clad
body into a big coat, quietly slipped into the passage, where, behind
three shut doors, slept Rodney, Gerda and Kay, and stole down the back
stairs to the kitchen, which was dim and blinded, blue with china and
pale with dawn, and had a gas stove. She made herself some tea. She also
got some bread and marmalade out of the larder, spread two thick chunks,
and munching one of them, slipped out of the sleeping house into the
dissipated and riotous garden.

Looking up at the honeysuckle-buried window of the bedroom of Gerda,
Neville nearly whistled the call to which Gerda was wont to reply.
Nearly, but not quite. On the whole it was a morning to be out alone in.
Besides, Neville wanted to forget, for the moment, about birthdays, and
Gerda would have reminded her.

Going round by the yard, she fetched Esau instead, who wouldn't remind
her, and whose hysterical joy she hushed with a warning hand.

Across the wet and silver lawn she sauntered, between the monstrous
shadows of the elms, her feet in the old sand shoes leaving dark prints
in the dew, her mouth full of bread and marmalade, her black plait
bobbing on her shoulders, and Esau tumbling round her. Across the lawn to
the wood, cool and dim still, but not quiet, for it rang with music and
rustled with life. Through the boughs of beeches