"It's a pity Jim's got such a dull child," Miss Violet would say. "You
never would have expected it."
"What I like about a child," said Miss Emmy, "is a little cheerfulness
and natural spirit--not all this moping."
Angelina was not, on the whole, popular.... The aunts had very little
idea of making a house cheerful for a child. The room allotted to
Angelina as a nursery was at the top of the house, and had once been a
servant's bedroom. It possessed two rather grimy windows, a faded brown
wallpaper, an old green carpet, and some very stiff, hard chairs. On one
wall was a large map of the world, and on the other an old print of
Romans sacking Jerusalem, a picture which frightened Angelina every
night of her life, when the dark came and the lamp illuminated the
writhing limbs, the falling bodies, the tottering walls. From the
windows the Square was visible, and at the windows Angelina spent a
great deal of her time, but her present nurse--nurses succeeded one
another with startling frequency--objected to what she called
"window-gazing." "Makes a child dreamy," she said; "lowers her spirits.
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