Robin used to
watch them hopping about on the slate roofs of the homes on the
other side of the street. They fluttered their wings, they picked
up straws and carried them away. She thought they must have houses
of their own among the chimneys--in places she could not see. She
fancied it would be nice to hop about on the top of a roof oneself
if one were not at all afraid of falling. She liked the chippering
and chirping sounds the birds made became it sounded like talking
and laughing--like the talking and laughing she sometimes wakened
out of her sleep to lie and listen to when the Lady Downstairs had
a party. She often wondered what the people were doing because it
sounded as if they liked doing it very much.
Sometimes when it had rained two or three days she had a feeling
which made her begin to cry to herself--but not aloud. She had
once had a little black and blue mark on her arm for a week where
Andrews had pinched her because she had cried loud enough to be
heard. It had seemed to her that Andrews twisted and pinched the
bit of flesh for five minutes without letting it go and she had
held her large hand over her mouth as she did it.
"Now you keep that in your mind," she had said when she had finished
and Robin had almost choked in her awful little struggle to keep
back all sound.
The one thing Andrews was surest of was that nobody would come
upstairs to the Nursery to inquire the meaning of any cries which
were not unearthly enough to disturb the household.
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