word of the day: adumbrant

word of the day: adumbrant

Miss Bianca, leader of the Mouse Prisoners' Aid Society, is on a mission to The Orient (i.e., India) to rescue a boy who has been sentenced to be trampled by elephants. Plans are afoot, but it is just dusk and she must wait until the full moon’s light to execute (one might say). 

To pass the time in the garden where she waits Miss Bianca writes poetry. She imagines herself on elephant back.

‘Swinging high and low, where the tall grasses grow

In the shade of the sun!’

… ’You’ve got it the wrong way round,’ criticized [a nearby] lizard. ‘It ought to be “in the sun unafraid of the shade!”’

Miss Bianca was unused to composing poetry so to speak in public, and after this … interruption went on inside her head. 

‘No sweeter spot to wait in,

Relax and meditate in,

Till the long hours of waiting have run!’

M. B.

She composed several other verses, all in the same lulling rhythm, and in fact halfway through the fifth had lulled herself to sleep. … Miss Bianca … slept until past sundown and long after that, absolutely until the skies lightened with adumbrant moonrise.

definition (Oxford / Lexico): Casting shadows; shadowy, shady. In extended use: represented in outline; vague, indistinct.

I like the way Margery Sharp slips in some impromptu poetry workshop in the middle of the adventures. 

source:

Miss Bianca in the Orient

by Margery Sharp

illustrations by Erik Blegved

1970. Little, Brown, & Co., New York