"Why, old man, what's the matter?"
But Ernest Henry could not explain. Had he but known it he had, in that
rejection of his friend, completed the first stage of his "Pilgrimage
from this world to the next."
CHAPTER III
ANGELINA
I
Angelina Braid, on the morning of her third birthday, woke very early.
It would be too much to say that she knew it was her birthday, but she
awoke, excited. She looked at the glimmering room, heard the sparrows
beyond her windows, heard the snoring of her nurse in the large bed
opposite her own, and lay very still, with her heart thumping like
anything. She made no noise, however, because it was not her way to make
a noise. Angelina Braid was the quietest little girl in all the Square.
"You'd never meet one nigher a mouse in a week of Sundays," said her
nurse, who was a "gay one" and liked life.
It was not, however, entirely Angelina's fault that she took life
quietly; in 21 March Square, it was exceedingly difficult to do anything
else. Angelina's parents were in India, and she was not conscious, very
acutely, of their existence.
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