Andrews' idea of her duties did not involve boring herself to death
by sitting in a room on the top floor when livelier entertainment
awaited her in the basement where the cook was a woman of wide
experience, the housemaid a young person who had lived in gay
country houses, and the footman at once a young man of spirit
and humour. So Robin spent many hours of the day--taking them
altogether--quite by herself. She might have more potently resented
her isolations if she had ever known any other condition than
that of a child in whom no one was in the least interested and
in whom "being good" could only mean being passive under neglect
and calling no one's attention to the fact that she wanted anything
from anybody. As a bird born in captivity lives in its cage and
perhaps believes it to be the world, Robin lived in her nursery
and knew every square inch of it with a deadly if unconscious
sense of distaste and fatigue. She was put to bed and taken up,
she was fed and dressed in it, and once a day--twice perhaps if
Andrews chose--she was taken out of it downstairs and into the
street. That was all. And that was why she liked the sparrows so
much.
And sparrows are worth watching if you live in a nursery where
nothing ever happens and where, when you look out, you are so high
up that it is not easy to see the people in the world below, in
addition to which it seems nearly always raining.
Pages:
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96